LA Knight reveals he got told off backstage after viral moment with John Cena at WWE Payback 2023.
Knight squared off against The Miz in a match with Cena serving as the special guest referee at Payback 2023. After the match, Cena attempted to raise Knight’s hand, but The Megastar initially snubbed The GOAT before later accepting the endorsement.
Appearing on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, LA Knight explained that he intentionally showed hesitation before accepting John Cena’s endorsement at Payback 2023 because his character was still transitioning from heel to babyface.
“Yeah. At the same time, I didn’t want to be like… I was a babyface, but I wasn’t that babyface. I was the fan favorite, but I was still the damn heel from just a couple of weeks or months before,” Knight said.
“So, in that regard, considering everything that happened in the match, I try not to ignore what happened five minutes ago. I don’t remember the exact details, but there was something where he wasn’t there for a pin or something like that. It gave me enough of a reason to say, ‘Hey, you almost cost me this thing.'”
LA Knight reveals backstage reaction to snubbing John Cena
Knight recalled being told backstage that he shouldn’t have acted that way because Cena was such a major star, but he felt it was important to stay true to his character.
“I didn’t want to go straight into, ‘Oh yes, great, thank you. Hi.’ I remember getting to the back and having a little chat where somebody told me, ‘You can’t do that. That’s John Cena. He’s a big deal.’
“And I’m like, ‘I understand that, but I’ve got to be me.’ I haven’t suddenly done a complete 180. Even if I’m gradually becoming more of a babyface, it can’t just be a sudden zero-to-hero transformation.
“So for me, it was kind of like, ‘Okay, he’s going to put me over, but at the same time, I’m going to jawjack him a little bit. Hey, you almost cost me that thing.’ Then I look at the hand, look at the hand again, and think, ‘Okay, cool. Yeah, we can do this.’ But there had to be some tension there. I couldn’t just go with it.”
Interestingly, WWE’s official YouTube upload of the full Payback 2023 match appears to have omitted the initial post-match interaction in which LA Knight hesitated to accept John Cena’s endorsement. The edited version jumps past much of the tension between the two, making Knight’s comments about receiving backstage criticism for the moment particularly noteworthy.
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