Shawn Michaels knew what LA Knight had to offer and fought to keep him around.
Michaels spoke with Mike Coppinger for ESPN ahead of the 2024 Royal Rumble. During the conversation, Michaels spoke highly of LA Knight and said that he didn’t let age factor in on his opinion of Knight’s skills.
“I would tell them all the time that there is this guy,” Michaels told ESPN. “When people say a WWE guy or a Vince guy, he was f—ing it. I was trying to tell [them], lose the three-eight. He never looked to me like he had any mileage on him. To me he was still brand frickin’ new.”
Despite this, Knight ended up on an internal cut list “several times”, according to Michaels. He ended up going to bat for Knight and saved his job by saying he couldn’t be cut since he was in the middle of a storyline.
“I never lied, I did always have him in stuff. But there were a couple of people that I knew from this mythical age thing, wasn’t fitting their qualifications, but I always kept them in storylines. And so my excuse was, we can’t get rid of him now,” Michaels said.
“They never f—ing paid attention to us,” Michaels said. “I was trying to finesse a certain someone, but all he would see is the one number, the three-eight. Someone who’s damn near my age, and I’m having an argument with them. Were you old when you were 38?”
Read More: Baron Corbin On Shawn Michaels: It’s The Greatest Of All Time Telling You ‘Go Get It’
