LA Knight opens up about lack of WWE direction
LA Knight is still receiving good crowd reactions, but he thinks they’d be even bigger if his character have more of a direction.
On a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Knight described himself as being “kind of a man without a country” due to not having a set trajectory in WWE at the moment. He is proud of the staying power he’s had and described his crowd reactions as still being an 8/10. If he had a storyline fans could invest in, he believes the reactions would be a 10/10 once again.
“I think there were a lot of people leaning on the idea that that was going to be a fad. There were a lot of people leaning on the idea that was going to be a flavor of the month, that that was going to be a passing thing,” Knight said. “Here we are in 2026. I walked in the ring last night — now you could argue, yeah, maybe the reactions aren’t quite as big as they were at that time. I’m going to tell you why that is in a second. But if you noticed last night, I still circle around, I get the thing, and I stand there and they still chant the name.
“Now you could say that’s programming, you could say that’s passion, you could say it’s whatever it is. Bottom line is: it’s still there. However, the reason it’s not as big as it was is because right now I’m just kind of a man without a country so to speak. I’m not really doing, I don’t have a set trajectory at this moment. If you look at last year, last summer when I started all of a sudden, me and Seth [Rollins] were going at it for the title and it’s me and The Vision, there it was renewed again.
“So it’s a matter of just making sure that I’ve got direction, I’ve got somewhere to go and I’ve got somewhere that people care about, something that people can sink their teeth into, that then takes it up from an 8 up to a 10 and beyond. And so I think that’s really just the key to the whole thing. And it’s kind of crazy that it’s kept on this long when I don’t think a lot of people were counting on that being the case.”
Though he has his frustrations with the business, Knight is grateful that pro wrestling has finally rewarded him after he spent much of his career as a journeyman. He’s earned the trust of WWE and no longer has promos scripted for him, instead just having an overall point that he needs to cover. He’ll sometimes receive instructions like making sure to say “King & Queen of the Ring” instead of just “King of the Ring” for branding purposes.
Knight competed at WrestleMania 42 in a six-man tag match where he and The Usos defeated Logan Paul, Austin Theory & IShowSpeed. And while Knight doesn’t feel like his character has much of a direction right now, his WWE schedule remains busy. He noted that an injury to someone else led to him being booked for WWE’s full three-week summer 2026 European tour instead of only working the TV dates he was originally set for.
LA Knight on his wrestling future —
At 43 years old, Knight’s in-ring career is much closer to the end than the beginning. He told Insight that he feels like he could physically keep going for a while but mentally wants to be home spending time with his dogs. It tortures him inside knowing that his puppies might only have 10-15 years left.
“The funny thing is, physically, I could do this for a long time. I’m really good physically,” Knight said. “Mentally, I’m just like, I want to snuggle puppies.”
Van Vliet asked Knight if he would like to wrestle into his 50s.
“No, f*** no. No. Are you nuts? No,” he responded. “But would I like to be able to come in and maybe like do an occasional appearance or do some, yeah, sure, maybe. But I don’t think I’ve been built up to the point where I can do like an Undertaker-type thing or an Austin thing or something like that. So I don’t think that’s in my future either.
“So it’s pretty much going to be at some point when I decide to call it, I’m going to disappear into the sunset and you’ll just never see me again. I’m not even joking. I’m being dead-ass serious. If they decide at some point and they get crazy enough to go, ‘We’re going to put him in the Hall of Fame,’ sure, I’ll come back and I’ll do that, but I got a feeling that probably ain’t going to happen either. But maybe that’s my own feeling of just never being — no matter where I’ve gone, I’ve always felt underappreciated in the wrestling business.”
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.