LA Knight (@RealLAKnight) is a WWE professional wrestler and former United States Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Stamford, CT to discuss winning the United States Championship, brawling with AJ Styles at the WrestleMania 40 media day, what if he joined WWE 10 years ago, how he became the Slim Jim guy, how much longer he intends to wrestle, possible retirement, eliminating Brock Lesnar from the Royal Rumble, and more!

So you’re reactions are getting louder and louder when your music hits, the pops are getting louder and louder. When did it start to get to an inflection point that you noticed?

“In March of 2023 was the first time I noticed, but noticing it continue to pick up and continuing to progress would have been just all through that spring and summer. But the crazy thing is, 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, and here we are, 2026, I walk 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 gonna tell you why that is in a second, but if you notice 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 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 were going 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, and something that people can sink their teeth into that then takes it up from an 8 up to a 10 and beyond. 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 are counting on that being the case.” 

Where would you want this to head? What direction would you want this to head in for the fans to sink their teeth into?

“I’m not a notoriously great planner. I don’t have an exact trajectory, necessarily. I think I just look at it and I go, is it not a crime from an outsider perspective, even from an insider perspective, but I guess a couple of different perspectives looking at this from. But from an outsider perspective, you look at, here’s this force that came in, and I took this thing by storm, and people make comparisons. They say, Steve Austin got real hot, and Daniel Bryan got real hot, and you could even say Oba Femi, whatever. You look at these things, but all these guys, by the time they had gotten hot and started getting the big pops, they had had big victories, big pushes, they had had titles. Even Austin, Austin didn’t really start getting the mega pops until he was already champion, like it started building up, and he was the Intercontinental Champion, he was Tag Team Champion, all that stuff, but it wasn’t like the crazy mega pops that you got in like 98, 99. Daniel Bryan, same thing, he’d already been multiple time Intercontinental Champion, Tag Team Champion. What was I doing? I was middle bottom of the card, getting beat every week. But I had 30 seconds, 60 seconds to talk, and when you look at it from I’m able to take that, and then become the number one merch seller. I’m able to be, you know, all of a sudden now I’m the favorite for Money in the Bank. All of a sudden now I’m the guy that the people are demanding, not because I was pushed in that direction, not because the machine got behind me. At some point, the machine had to get behind me. You can’t deny that at some point. You wanna talk about undeniable? That was me, but at the same time, there’s still some resistance.”

How was it working with Bray Wyatt leading up to that match that you guys had?

“It was good. It was good because it was a challenge. It was very different. It’s weird to work with the supernatural type stuff, because with my character, especially, I don’t want to sell it too much, because it feels so silly, but at the same time, I don’t want to sh*t on what he’s doing, so it’s like, you got to find that balance, it’s a nice little challenge to walk that line, to be like, I’m not afraid of this sh*t. But then he does some sh*t, and you can be like wait, okay, all right, that kind of gets me. You just got to find the right way to walk that line, and he was just like he was cool off the bat, he got me, I got him, and it was just a matter of just again finding the way to walk that line and make those styles work.”

I was at the press day when you and AJ Styles were fighting. You were next to each other:

“I walked into the room and I’m shooting him looks, and he might have said some stuff. He’s doing his interview, I was talking to somebody else. So, whoever I was talking to, while I was doing that, AJ is over here behind me. I’d given looks, and he’d referenced me, and I’d looked over there, and stuff. But at some point AJ tossed a stool in my direction, and at that point all I’m thinking is again the depth of the story we had told up to now. I’m like, there’s no way I wouldn’t react if he throws his stool at me. What am I going to do? I’m going to fight him. So I go over and just start fighting him, and I’m thinking surely security is going to come and break this up real quick, and it just went on and on. We’re down there work-shooting, and he’s knocking me away, because we got to make it look good now, because we’re like in the people. I’m like, where the f*ck is security? What is taking so long? Then finally, like, because we’re both blown up at this point. But yeah, it was just literally going off the cuff. How do I not serve the story that we’ve told this whole time, even to where he’s serving it now, just by throwing the stool. Obviously, I’m sure he wasn’t intending to get to where it got to, but in my head, I’m like, I have gone to his house to fight him. He throws a stool at me from five feet away. What am I going to do? Just shrug it off? No. So I went over there, thinking security is going to take care of it. They didn’t. I mean they did finally, but yeah, it took a minute, and so I hit that, he slammed the sh*t out of me, and he ended up with a bloody nose, so after that we both got a phone call, though, like, what are you guys doing, you can’t do that, and it was like, hey, I’m trying to keep it alive, I’m trying.”

It works so well for the story

“That was the thing, and I think he felt the same way. We weren’t getting like marquee attention for this match or anything going into it, so it was like, how can we up this and try and get more attention on this instead? That wasn’t pre-thought, but I’m saying, even with the things of what if I go to his house and we’re gonna get arrested, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it was just trying to try to ramp that thing up as much as possible, and that was just a happy accident that I think, because then they ended up using it and putting it on TV anyway.” 

What do you think your career looks like if you signed with WWE 10 years ago and became LA Knight?

“Who knows? I might not be here at all. I don’t know, because it’s tough to tell, just because so many of the circumstances were different. Again, I think about the Vince stuff, and I only got a little bit of it, and I was over it pretty quickly. But it was also due to the circumstances and the view on me, because of that number, that 39 number, what a scary number. So, I don’t know, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, the circumstances could have been completely different, because of that not being a factor. Who knows? But at the same time, I gotta look at it like this, because there’s so many guys who’ve been doing this for so long, and I’ve been doing it for a long time, but not on this WWE schedule. This WWE schedule, I mean, beats you up. Right now, we’re in the best time for a WWE schedule, except for me in the next couple of weeks. I’ll get to that in a second, but for the most part, it’s not like it was even 7,8,9 years ago, or even just a few years ago, when we had the house shows every single weekend. So, in that regard, it’s great. I’ve gotten here the perfect time, where it’s like I’ve had a 20-year career where I haven’t beaten my body up too much. I’ve never had any major surgeries or injuries, Iron Man baby.”

So, the next few weeks? 

“So, we’ve got Raw coming up in Italy and in France in the next two weeks, that’s all I was on, and there’s tour dates in between. All of a sudden there was an injury, so now I got added to next week. Okay, fine. Then all of a sudden there was an injury, and I got added to Thursday, so now I’m gonna leave here tonight, go home, and I’m gonna repack, and then I’m leaving again tomorrow night to go to Liverpool immediately. So, I’m gonna be gone for like the next three weeks straight, so that’s gonna be great.”

It must have been so frustrating when people just kept bringing up that number. Your age?

“Yeah, I get it, though, because I think a lot of guys who are my age, and even a lot of guys who are younger than me, they’re in rough, rough shape. I’ve taken care of myself very well. I think I worked in a very safe manner, to where again it hasn’t led me to have [injuries]. I’ve broken my nose once, I’ve had a few concussions and stuff, but I’ve never had anything ever, never ever. I’m super reliable, I’ve never been on the shelf for any kind of real legitimate injury. My hope is to get out at some point, eventually, and not have any of those things on me. I’ve got neck and back pain, everybody has.”

I just don’t know why it was made such a point about you, and there’s so many people on the roster whose age began with a four.

“I think it’s just the idea that I was starting brand new, and so a lot of the guys who were there, who were already in their late 30s and 40s, had been established. I think it was just looking at this is going to be this long slow climb, we don’t want to invest. I mean, I 100% get it. If all you’re looking at is a picture and a number, 100% get it, but you got to figure out what’s under that. But if I’m honest, I understand the guy’s too busy to look at what’s under the hood. It’s just, hey, this is what I see, I don’t want to invest in that. I understand it. At the same time, I know me, and if we look at the way things worked out, goddamn, it worked out pretty well for everybody, didn’t it? I mean, sh*t, it didn’t take five years for me to get off the ground. It took, I mean, if we’re really looking at it real, LA Knight didn’t pop up till at least on SmackDown until October or November, I think it was, and then by July, we were full hilt, that was around the time that it was Money in the Bank, and sh*t was taking off at that point in time.”

I’ve always wanted to know the story behind your hand symbol. What is that?

“It’s a secret, and I’ll tell it in a few years. That it’s a very easy-to-decode secret that’s right in front of everybody’s eyes, but at the same time… So I used to come out and do this when I’d hit the buckle, but then I saw I was always thinking like someday I’m going to be in WWE, so I was always working that way, and I didn’t want to do anything that seemed like something somebody else was doing. So then AJ started doing this, and I was like, “Close, can’t do it. And I was like well, what can I do? I can’t just do this, that’s Austin, whatever. I was like, well, what else can I do? And I started thinking like different hand signs and stuff, and I’m looking at sign language, and I’m like, no, that sucks. Then at some point I found something where I was like, oh, I think I kind of like that, and I started kind of doing it a little bit, and I was like, I’m gonna stick with that. I started doing it, and then I started noticing people out there doing it, and I was like, yeah, I think we’re good, I think we’re good with this. Eventually, I’ll tell the story, but it says something there, it says something that links me to my past.”

Do you think about how much longer you want to do this?

“All the time. I’m looking at the clock all the time. The funny thing is, physically I could do this for a long time. I’m really good physically. Mentally, I’m just like, I’m gonna snuggle puppies.”

Would you like to wrestle into your fifties?

“No! f*ck no. Would I like to be able to come in and maybe do an occasional appearance? 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 gonna be at some point when I decide to call it I’m gonna disappear in 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 they get crazy enough to go, we’re gonna put him in the Hall of Fame, sure, I’ll come back do that. But I got a feeling that probably ain’t gonna happen either. But maybe that’s my own feeling of just like never being… No matter where I’ve gone, I’ve always felt underappreciated in the wrestling business, but I don’t know.”

You had an incredible moment where you’re in the ring looking at Roman Reigns. There’s that beautiful shot where he’s perfectly in the reflection of your sunglasses

“They have memed the sh*t of that and put everybody’s ass in that and everything else!”

At what point did you realize that this, this was a thing?

“I think I saw it like the next night, they, somebody got that photo. That’s cool! That’s where I was like, all right, well, I can never change these classes now, these are perfect.”

How did you become the Slim Jim guy?

“If I’m honest, I don’t have a single clue. This was back in 2023 in the summer, around like July or August, and they were like, “Hey, so Slim Jim’s interested, and they want to do this thing where it’s going to be four commercials over the next year, plus a handful of appearances, yada yada yada, and they’re going to do sponsored matches. I think that was when they did the Slim Jim Battle Royal, and since I threw everybody else over the top rope, I then became Mr. Slim Jim.”

You threw Brock Lesnar out of the Royal Rumble.

“I did. I’ll tell that story someday, but it feels too new and fresh to me. But I’ll just say things went differently than they were supposed to.“

What is LA Knight grateful for?

“My puppies, and that I can take care of myself and not worry about it.”

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