How LA Knight overcame a terrible gimmick to become a WWE fan favourite

Okay, have you ever found yourself saying La Knight's catchphrase when she appears on TV, let me talk to you, yeah, you're not alone. The Knights' rise in 2023 has been meteoric, listen to that reaction when she appears on TV, even when she's not in the main event. he's the big one, his response from fans right now, but for some who followed him for most of the last decade it's not a huge surprise, although others want to claim that because he's 40 years old, this can't be his big break, he is 40 years old. He has taken a long time to arrive and you also have to consider that many of the great main participants in professional wrestling had their break, their greatest period of success, between 35 and 45 years old, Logan Paul, who represents that generation Z of chasing someone. for just getting old asked The night in London before Money in the Bank Megastar who and pointed out that he saw that he was a man who was supposed to be a manager after 20 years of a mediocre mediocre career, a little too harsh a word there Logan Paul , uh, why don't you slow down, buddy?

Because he wasn't bad and by saying that he was supposed to be a manager, he managed to overcome that manager

gimmick

that was just mediocre and became the most popular star in WWE. Let's see how it happened. Aside from his current career in WWE, his most well-known period of his professional wrestling career was his four-year stint with Impact Wrestling that put him on the map, even during his early years he had all the makings of a mega star who trust to stay. he took the microphone with authority and carried the charisma that came off the screen.

He was so overcome by that impact that he even gave him his own talk show called fact of life where we often heard that catchphrase that we hear now yes, delete, yes, absolutely, yes, delete, yes, that's true, some of Impact was big in WWE after he finished making a name for himself. Impact in 2019, there was talk of him going into elite wrestling, but he ultimately declined and waited before signing with WWE in 2021. This was his second run. With WWE NXT previously had a less successful period with the black and yellow brand between 2013 and 2014, where it simply got lost in the shuffle of a very rigid and strong NXT roster that was really at its peak at the time, although this time it was ready.

It wasn't surprising when La Knight jumped to WWE's main roster a year after his return to NXT, but apparently there's the problem that if you're an aging person like all of us, that's becoming a problem. He was 39 years old, which is not the case. Not bad in modern professional wrestling, as I mentioned, many big stars break out in this period of their lives, but it seems that certain WWE higher-ups didn't want to bet their future on a guy of that age, so he was assigned to Mace and Mansour and formed ultimate male role models by becoming a sleazy agent named Max Dupree.

This helped Mace and Mansour get over each other a bit and he was also recruited to bring in his sister Maxine Dupree. The only problem was that there was no real plan for them. A couple of months after Triple H took over WWE's creative reigns, he quickly returned to his La Knight persona, which feels like a throwback to the heyday of '80s pro wrestling. Speaking with comicbook.com , The Knight said this. about Max Dupree Persona I'll only say this at the end of the day. I can make anything work, but at the end of the day I have a hard time not being me.

I'll tell you it wasn't like that. So when things happened and La Night started to shine, it was the right place to go and it wasn't too soon to reveal WWE's concerns with his age or what led him to

become

manager even though he didn't have surgeries. , there are no major ailments that can inhibit him as an in-ring performer, it's also a little strange that this was his concern, given that you have 40-year-old superstars winning world championships and being pushed into 40 seems to be the new 30 in WWE and They seemed to have made a strange exception for LA Knight, but it was about to get worse.

He told Chris Van Vleet on his Insights podcast that he was sure he was about to be fired without specifying what he said a bunch of things happened that made him feel that way, luckily he got the call telling him they would keep him around given which was red hot by his own admission towards the end of his NXT career, it's not hard to see why he felt Max Dupree was just one step behind him and on the radio Rosenberg had this to say: I mean, let's be honest, when you get brought up to the main roster there is a nice little pay increase, I can't say I don't appreciate it, at the same time there is a lot of frustration knowing, as a man, that I was red hot at the end of that NXT run, while Knight was determined to make it work again.

Triple H's intervention certainly helped him because the game informed him of the decision to

become

The Knight once again, you can only imagine. What a sign of relief it was for him when he went from being the top manager of male models, that's still strange to say, to being himself again. Can we get a yes, yes, yes? And this is not a knock on what the top male models were. entertaining and they made the most of what they had to do something with it, but it doesn't feel like a Main Event to you; It was certainly a detriment to La Knight more than anyone else in the faction, with Maxine Dupree in retrospect probably being a better fit for them anyway, but the real turning point for Knight came in the form of a fight against Bray.

Wyatt at the end of 2022. A rivalry began against the returning Bray Wyatt. Wyatt was only a couple months into this return and fans feverishly ate up every piece. of cryptic puzzle pieces online in the lead-up to his eventual return, so what would be his first big fight with the new character? The new presence of Uncle Howdy being creepy in and out of the ring seemed exciting, but since the two men don't necessarily have the reputation of being the best five-star wrestlers in the ring, there was little enthusiasm for it, that doesn't mean that They couldn't make it work and it added to the fact that their Royal Rumble match became a literal advertisement.

For Mountain Dew, all-black things didn't look good for either man and he always set up Bray Wyatt to get his win, especially considering this was his first match in years, but let's face it, Bray Wyatt was the biggest opponent he's ever had. Ellie Knight had. could have faced in his career at the time and even though the match played out the way it did and left fans with less than they expected, it allowed the broader WWE audience to get a good look at The Night and what could be after that. Royal Rumble Match, many fans decided that La Knight was the man who would get the push and not buy it, and that probably wasn't what people were thinking going into the match, there was a real sense of this because throughout the demon's entire run between 2019 and 2021, most of the superstars who feuded with Wyatt ended up coming out worse than when they came in, Mrs.

Rollins Randy Orton Braun Strowman, are still big stars, but they lost a bit of their edge, although he was unfairly omitted from Wrestlemania. card in Los Angeles and he is La Knight, come on, it writes itself, he persisted and

overcame

it on his own, it is much more than just phrases that led him to connect with the general wrestling audience, although WWE has often been accused of insulting the intelligence of the fans are not what they are doing and if you think that just on a surface level you are not looking at the big picture, honey, what the fans can feel is an instant authenticity in an era where we have great artists in the ring but fewer characters that connect everyone. the path to Arena's top row is easy, it's easy why people would gravitate towards someone like L.A Knight for the hardcore vocal fanbases.

He is a man who did everything by himself, without the machine behind him, so we have to fight the machine. Rage Against the. Machine to the other more casual fan, he is a great conversationalist and reminds them of the great over the top characters they liked, like Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, while adding his own unique touch, it's no coincidence that his reactions improved week by week. . week and if you want to know a simple reason why he became the most popular star in WWE, it's because he did it alone, we see this every few years, it's part of the natural cycle of WWE and its audience with a superstar emerging unexpectedly above where they actually stand in the crowd and get reactions that no one saw coming or at least should have seen coming.

The night Max Dupree's character's escape was directly related to him being saved from possible release, the timing certainly worked, but that was just about all the luck he had, as we've seen, La Knight has been positioned in some big fights recently, but he didn't make the money like money in the bank and, even more recently, he failed to get into contention for the United States title. WWE en It's not always good to strike while the iron is hot, but as Triple H has said, patience is something you have to apply to La Knight, but before we finish, here's a quote from the man himself in an interview with Digital Spy knowing that your journey is far from being done, I remember the journey very fondly in many ways and at the same time I look at it with a lot of frustration and a lot of anger because I should have been here a long time ago, I should have been doing this and having this match and everything This is a long time ago, although at the same time I appreciate what I did and the way I had to deal with it and the fact that I was able to live the life I had. to live particularly for the last 10 years thanks for watching sports, key to wrestling, what do you want to happen on La Night?

Let us know in the comments below and check out more great videos from our channel right now.