LA Knight Discusses Not Overpraising John Cena During 2023 Interactions: “I’m Putting Myself On The Same Level As Him, He’s One Of My Peers”

L.A. Knight speaks about his history with John Cena.

Coming out of the December 1st Monday Night Raw, L.A. Knight and GUNTHER advanced to the finals of ‘The Last Time is Now’ tournament.

The two talents are set to go one-on-one on the 12/8 WWE Raw to determine who will face John Cena in his final match at Saturday Night’s Main Event on 12/13.

Following his tournament match win, L.A. Knight joined Raw Recap with Megan Morant and Sam Roberts. He was asked about his past interactions with Cena and not overpraising him. Knight puts himself on the same level as the 17-time WWE World Champion and views him as a peer.

“You might agree or disagree with this but in my mind, I’m putting myself on the same level as him. He’s one of my peers. So in that sense, in this business, if he’s one of my peers, I’m not gonna look up to him. Again, I can respect everything that he’s done, and again, people might call him the greatest of all time; he might be the greatest of all time and I can recognize that. All the things that he’s done, unseen 17, all this stuff. But with that being the case, I’m still not gonna go in there and lather this guy up, and if you look at our first interaction, the reason that I was — I don’t wanna get too in the weeds here but, there was a point in that match with Miz where he almost cost me the match. There was a little bit of a distraction; something happened so I was a little bit hot at him at the end. So it wasn’t like I was gonna go up to him and give him a big hug and hey man, that was great. So for me, it was a little bit of, ‘Hey man, you almost cost me that whole damn thing, and you gotta watch yourself,’ because look, he’s been around a long time. I hadn’t. So you could also say, well, maybe you should just kind of maybe walk on eggshells in that sense. Nah, nah, we don’t do that. As far as I’m concerned, it was, hey, I need to make my footprint here, and if I’m gonna do that, with no disrespect, again, respecting everything that he’s done and understand that but at the same time, I’m a man, and if you’re gonna take, potentially, food off my plate, we gotta talk about that. So yes, I was definitely a little bit perturbed for the moment but eventually we got to the handshake and we were good.”

Knight defeated Jey Uso, and GUNTHER defeated Solo Sikoa to advance in the tournament. Fightful’s review of the semifinal matches and the entirety of the 12/1 Monday Night Raw can be found on our YouTube channel.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit Raw Recap with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.