LA Knight on Lack of Direction for His WWE Career & His Frustrations Over It, His In-Ring Career Future, Brock Lesnar Elimination at Royal Rumble 2026 Didn’t Go As Planned, & His Press Brawl with AJ Styles for WrestleMania 40 Going Viral

A recent episode of the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast featured LA Knight as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Knight’s thoughts about his lack of direction for his wrestling career in WWE and his frustrations over how his crowd reactions could be even bigger if his character had more of a direction.

“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. 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.”

Knight also gave his thoughts about the future of his in-ring wrestling career.

“The funny thing is, physically, I could do this for a long time. I’m really good physically. Mentally, I’m just like, I want to snuggle puppies.”

Knight also gave his thoughts about him not wanting to wrestle into his 50s.

“No, f*** no. No. Are you nuts? No. 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.”

Knight also gave his thoughts about how Brock Lesnar’s elimination in this year’s Men’s Royal Rumble match by him and Cody Rhodes did not go as originally planned for Lesnar.

“I did (eliminate Brock Lesnar). And man, 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.” 

Knight also gave his thoughts about his and AJ Styles’ brawl at a press event that went viral ahead of their match against each other at WrestleMania 40.

“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.”

Knight also gave his thoughts about how his press brawl with Styles turned out to be a “happy accident” over it going viral compared to what they had originally planned for it.

“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.”

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com 1 & 2, Fightful.com