Knight felt there was always a chance someone from WWE was tuning in.
There are seven participants in the 2023 men’s Money in the Bank Ladder match. Those names are Ricochet, Shinsuke Nakamura, Santos Escobar, Butch, Damian Priest, Logan Paul and L.A. Knight.
Heading into WWE Money in the Bank, Knight stopped past The Ringer Wrestling Show’s Cheap Heat podcast and chatted with Peter Rosenberg.
As they were going through Knight’s career in wrestling, he spoke about his time in IMPACT as ‘Eli Drake’. He explained how that run positively impacted his career but admitted that he felt not many people were watching the show. Knight added that he thought there was a chance someone from WWE was watching but regardless of that, he always attempted to do what he could to stand out.
Well I mean, it was pretty big (time in IMPACT Wrestling) because I mean, you consider here — at that point, the biggest exposure I’d had was Championship Wrestling from Hollywood or something, or maybe I think I was on the 200th episode of NXT as a lumberjack. You know, nameless, whatever. So at that point, it’s like alright, well now I’ve at least got some level of a platform to be on, I’m making money, I don’t have to work some other job while I’m doing this so I’m able to live, do what I wanna do and at the same time for me, my thought was always… First of all, my thought was nobody’s watching this show because that was the damn truth (he chuckled). But, on top of that, in my head I’m just thinking to myself, alright, maybe there’s a chance. Maybe there’s a slight chance that somebody at WWE might be watching this and so in my head, it was always, I’m gonna work like I’m in WWE or at least to the best of my ability or I’m gonna work at least like they’re watching me so there was never, again, there was never a time for me to slack off, back off, take it easy, none of that stuff because for me, it was like I’m gonna do my damndest to stand out amongst everybody and keep doing what I know I have to give to this industry. Problem is, I’ve probably given too much to this industry at this point.
One of Knight’s signature catchphrases is, ‘Let me talk to ya’. He said that came about by accident. It started when he was tagging with Brian Cage in 2010 and while they were being interviewed, the interviewee went long with Cage so L.A. stepped in with the phrase.
‘Let me talk to ya’ kind of happened out of an accident. It was in 2010. I was tagging with Brian Cage at the time and we were out in California and the interviewee — we’d do this show called Mach One Wrestling. It was always these Friday night shows and afterwards, they’d have little interview sessions and stuff that they’d put online and in that, it felt like the interviewer was just interviewing Brian way too long… I said, ‘Let me talk to ya’ and I was just like, oh man, that might be a good little start, and so I just started using it and eventually, it’s just kind of become a thing.
Written and audio coverage of Money in the Bank is going to be provided here on POST Wrestling on July 1st.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Cheap Heat with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
