LA Knight challenges Roman Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship at Money in the Bank tonight, and he has a simple way of measuring the climb. Knight told the hosts of TMZ’s Inside the Ring that “going from making $30 on a shift at Cheesecake Factory to Championship, that ain’t too damn bad.”
Money in the Bank airs live on ESPN from the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, with the show starting at 6 p.m. ET. Reigns is the reigning champion, and the match came together after Knight hit him with a BFT following Raw in Mexico City on Sept. 14. Raw General Manager Adam Pearce made it official the next day, and Reigns is a heavy favorite in the Money in the Bank betting odds.
Three offers, one rejection and a last overture
Knight said WWE made him offers three years in a row while he was in TNA, where he wrestled as Eli Drake, but the timing never worked. “They just didn’t work with where I was and what I was doing,” he said.
The fourth year, 2019, he went back ready to say yes. The answer, as he tells it, was “Oh, no. We don’t want you now.” He landed in the NWA for a year and, in his words, “I thought it was done.”
COVID was the only stretch where he seriously believed his WWE dream was over. Knight figured the company wouldn’t hire a “ready-made product” with no major mainstream name, so he made “one last overture,” sending photos, video and a short paragraph on what he could offer. Talks started in the fall of 2020, and he walked into NXT in February 2021.
"Do or die" in New Orleans
Asked whether this is his last title shot, Knight said he probably framed it that way himself. The question he keeps hearing is why he hasn’t been world champion yet, and he called this “put up or shut up, do or die.” If it doesn’t happen, he said, the question becomes “where do I go from here?” A Royal Rumble win would be the next route, but he put the odds at one in 30.
On Reigns, Knight said he respects what the champion has done with what he’s been given, pointing to Reigns’ famous family and his own father, who loaded trucks for a living. Then he added, “You ask me, he ain’t in my league.”
The hosts told Knight that a win would stretch the gap between his WWE debut and a world title to 20 years, longer than the 15 they cited for Andre the Giant. Knight said he hadn’t considered the record. What stuck with him was that his first main roster match came in New Orleans almost exactly four years ago, in 2022. “It feels kind of full circle,” he said.
