It sounds like LA Knight has a bone to pick with The Rock

Is it worth it when WWE brings in the part-timers and gives them a bigger spotlight at major events than the full-time roster members who bust their ass every week for the company?

That question always comes up at this time of year due to WrestleMania, with this year’s list of part-timers currently including The Rock, Roman Reigns, and Logan Paul.

WWE has been trying to book The Rock in another WrestleMania match for over a decade (I’m not counting his one-move squash victory over Erick Rowan at WrestleMania 32 in 2016), and most people generally agree it’s a business move that makes sense now that it’s happening at WrestleMania 40. But I don’t know if LA Knight is fully convinced about that assumption.

Here he is on Busted Open Radio (courtesy of Fightful’s transcription) pointing out that WWE business was doing great before The Rock returned:

“You’re looking at one of the most recognizable faces in the world as far as television, movies, media in general. There is something to be added there. At the same time, you do have to look at your audience and say, ‘we’re moving in this direction. The audience wants this. Now, to do this, it’s going to look self-serving. It’s going to probably peeve a lot of people.’ There are a lot of different ways to look at it. My personal opinion, without going too deep into it, is that there is some merit to having him there and at the same time, we were doing very well selling out and all that stuff even without him. He can only add to it or I guess some people could say he could take away from it. You never know. As far as business is concerned, business is good. It’s good with him, it’s good without him.”

Knight goes on to take exception to The Rock’s recent talking point about wrestling being cool again now that the most electrifying man in sports and entertainment is back in a WWE ring:

“I hear him say wrestling is cool again, and he’s right, but I want to make sure everybody knows it started getting cool again six or seven months before he got there. I’m not saying he can’t add to that cool factor or that he won’t. I’m just saying, wrestling is cool again, and wrestling was cool again before he came back. I don’t want it to seem like all of a sudden it happened because of him. Nah nah.”

Six months ago is close to when LA Knight’s WWE push was approaching its hottest point, so it sounds like the megastar is trying to say he’s the guy responsible for making wrestling cool again.

Do you think the return of some part-timers has hurt LA Knight’s WWE push heading into WrestleMania, and that might explain why he’s pushing back a little bit on The Rock here? Let me know in the comments below if you agree with LA’s remarks about The People’s Champion, Cagesiders.