Summary

LA Knight says the fan support that carried him into WWE's upper tier did not follow the same path as Bryan Danielson or Steve Austin. While discussing that comparison during a SummerSlam media appearance, Knight argued that those stars had already held championships and worked prominent programs by the time their audience momentum peaked.

Knight said his own climb came while he had little sustained creative direction, including a period where he felt he was there to elevate Bray Wyatt. His comments also arrive as WWE continues to feel Wyatt's absence, with Braun Strowman recently opening up about the meaning behind his Bray Wyatt tribute tattoo.

Quote from LA Knight

Speaking while appearing on Mackey & Judd, Knight said:

"He is but I'm gonna put a little asterisk there. Because a lot of people make that comparison to me, and I'm gonna tell you how mine's completely different. His was a groundswell in the same way where it was like the people kind of took over the show and said, 'Hey, we want this guy.' However, by that point, the guy had already been an Intercontinental Champion, I think a couple times a Tag Team Champion. He had been in major storylines and all that. I had done literally nothing. I had no machine behind me, nothing. I was fed to Bray Wyatt, God bless him, and he was great to me and we had an awesome thing there, but I was literally fed to Bray Wyatt and in those times of being fed to him, I was able to shine in that process to where the people were like, 'Oh wait, this guy, he's pretty good,' and from there they could watch me just have no plan. There was nothing. Nothing for me, nothing for me, nothing for me but in those nothings that was happening, those little one-minute nothings where it was like, 'Alright, well, yeah, he can talk for a minute,' I made sure to make the damnedest of that. So, when we talk about a Daniel Bryan or we talk about Steve Austin or any of these others who had these groundswell of support, they had already had runs as Intercontinental Champion, Tag Team Champion, pushes. I had nothing. I came in and was just floundering, doing jack nothing, and from there, somehow out of that, just with those little bits of one minute to be able to talk and get my personality out and have a little bit of wrestling, I was able to go ahead and get that groundswell. If you ask me, not to toot my own horn but toot toot, nobody has ever done what I've done. I hate to say that and sound like I'm over here just blowing smoke up my own keister but it's just when you really pull everything back, pull all the layers back, nobody's ever done that."

Knight later went on to say:

"Not to take anything away from Austin. You're talking about one of the greatest of all time. But, if you wanna see when he really starts getting the major star pops, it doesn't really happen until he wins the WWF Championship, the WWE Championship. Me, I was getting the major star pops at Money in the Bank when I hadn't done a thing. I hadn't won a championship, I hadn't done anything. I had been on the roster for less than a year, doing next to nothing. Whereas, again, with Austin, he'd been around now for, what, when he started getting the monster pops, would have maybe been end of '97 but I'm really gonna say probably '98. He'd been on the roster for two years at that point in time. He'd already been, again, Intercontinental Champion. He'd been in major storylines with major talent. I was not... and it's the same thing with Daniel Bryan, it's the same thing with all of them. I'm not taking anything away from them. They all still did it. They proved themselves. Still a couple of the greatest of all time but I'm telling you just from that state, yeah, it's a major sticking point for me. Nobody's ever done that from that depth."

What Knight's WWE comparison says now

Knight's point is less about diminishing Danielson or Austin and more about staking out how unusual his own push felt. He is arguing that crowd support turned him into a featured WWE name before the company had committed to a comparable run of titles or top-level creative backing.

That matters because it reinforces how strongly Knight still sees his connection with the audience as the foundation of his standing. It also puts fresh attention on the Bray Wyatt feud as a turning point, since Knight believes that program gave him one of the few chances he had at the time to show WWE fans more of his personality.

Sources

LA Knight while speaking on Mackey & Judd