SEATTLE — On Friday Night SmackDown fans go crazy when L.A. Knight makes the long, triumphant walk from backstage to the wrestling ring.
It's a journey that has taken the champ not seconds, but years spent not in crowded arenas but small town gyms where he wrestled for a couple hundred bucks a night.
What were the early years like?
"Very lean financially I can tell you that," Knight said in a Zoom interview from a hotel room in Washington, DC. "I knew no one. I had no hook ups. I had no family. I had no nothing. Nobody I knew was connected to this business. I get that visual of Ralphie from 'A Christmas Story,' being on that slide, wanting to just get that opportunity from Santa, and he just gets the boot in the face and he gets 'Ho Ho Ho!' and gets pushed down the slide. That was me many many times throughout my career."
Knight, whose real name is Shaun Ricker, side-hustled by acting in local TV ads, working security and telephone sales, but he never gave up the dream.
"There was no Plan B," he said. " There was no alternative. There was nothing else but just forward motion,"
Finally at age 39, Knight made the WWE Roster. Two years later he beat Logan Paul for the championship.
"So I think things worked out alright," he said holding up his belt.
Now he's a megastar constantly defending his title.
"I've now gone from being the hunter to the hunted," he said.
The same guy wrestling for gas money has come just about as far as possible.
We asked now that he's presumably making life-changing money, how good is life?
"Brother I'm broke! I don't know what you're talking about!" he joked. "No, no, no, I'm very well taken care of. I can appreciate the value of a dollar since I've had to stretch them for so long. So at this point nothing's really changed except the fact that I think I can sometimes remind myself 'Hey you can be comfortable'!"
WWE'S Friday Night Smackdown at Climate Pledge Arena starts around 4:45 p.m. Friday afternoon and airs at 8 p.m. that night on the USA Network.
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