LA Knight almost became a world champion before he signed with WWE

During an interview with Chris Van Vliet, NWA owner Billy Corgan talked about how LA Knight (formerly known as Eli Drake) almost became a world champion before signing with WWE…

“When I was in the booking office of then-TNA, I was certainly one of his biggest fans. I pushed hard to get him more time. [He’s] one of the great promos of all time, that’s not to take away anything from his wrestling. He is a main-event level ability in the ring, but we all know that if you can walk and talk, you hit that other echelon. It’s great to see him hitting that now. He was being set up to be NWA Heavyweight Champion, and that’s right around I think the time the pandemic hit. He was under an NWA contract, and it got to the point where it was like, I can’t remember what it was, but me and him always did good business, no heat there. But it was obvious that he needed to go pursue other opportunities, and where I was standing at the time was just gonna hold him back. There was something there, but it was clearly understood that obviously it was built around Aldis for a while, but once Aldis was gonna drop the title, it was gonna clearly go to him. So it’s a shame that it never happened because we would have had a lot of fun. Always great to work with him. I’ve always gotten on with him, and I’m very happy for him. He deserves every bit of success that’s come his way because he’s fought and clawed his way to get there.” (quotes courtesy of Colin Tessier)