Hello, yes, That One LA Knight Hater back again, great to see everybody.

It’s been a while since I wrote about LA Knight, and that’s by design, because I’m probably just never going to like him, but a lot of other people do, and I really don’t want to spend every Friday telling them why they’re wrong for enjoying a thing. But I just couldn’t stay quiet this week after the internet briefly blew up in praise for his show-opening promo segment with Paul Heyman, because LA Knight still can’t cut a halfway decent promo and I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Y”all. It wasn’t just not great, it was actively bad. To me, it’s extremely clear that Knight isn’t there yet when it comes to WWE-style promos, and putting him in there with Paul Heyman, of all people, did not do him any favors. Knight seemed jittery. I don’t mind slip-ups like “Roman’s Reigns” so much as I mind the poorly-timed pauses. the mini-bouts of word salad, and the sheer repetitive nature of the things he was saying, all of which speak to someone who didn’t really go out there knowing what he wanted to say. His first line was “You wanna make noise, make noise, cause all you been doing out here is making a whole lot of damn noise,” which … what does that even mean?

The worst thing about it, though, was that there was no overarching point to this promo, nothing to get us excited about his match with Reigns at Crown Jewel, or even about the contract signing next week. When he wasn’t changing his mind about whether he wanted Heyman in the ring, what did Knight say to Heyman, really?

He’s mad that Reigns isn’t here so he’s intimidating Heyman; cool, everybody who has ever feuded with a Paul Heyman client has done this. The only point he really manages to get across is that he’s going to keep coming until he wins the title, which doesn’t really say anything about this specific fight. “I won’t stop, I can’t stop, and as a matter of fact, I will not stop,” he says, sounding like someone who definitely thought this promo through ahead of time. He’s repeating himself in weird ways, he’s adding phrases that don’t need to be added, and he’s taking way too long to say way too little, and all of it is just painfully generic. The words could be said by anyone. The fact that Knight is the one saying them adds nothing.

In the end, there’s just nothing here to latch onto. Knight says Reigns should be scared because he’s never seen anyone like Knight, but why? Why is there no one like you, LA? We never find out, we just learn he’s going to take the title “as fast as I’s risen.” Basically, the entire promo is empty bravado. The entire plane is made of bravado, it’s bravado all the way down — because LA Knight doesn’t have a character. He just. Has. Catchphrases. And not even good ones. Literally just 1-3 words that are easy to learn and fun to chant. Wow, what a great talker. Put the world title on him.

Sorry. Just had to get that out. Carry on.