New AEW signee Kevin Knight recently joined Adrian Hernandez of UNLIKELY for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the highly-touted international wrestling prospect spoke about signing with NJPW in addition to inking a deal with AEW, as well as how he didn’t feel disrespected by WWE making him go through a tryout process as opposed to signing him outright.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On signing with NJPW in addition to AEW: “New Japan has nothing to worry about. I’m not going anywhere. As I got the AEW graphic, I inked a deal with New Japan as well. New Japan gotta deal with me for another year or so, and so is AEW. I’m doing both. Best of both worlds. The Jet is intergalactic, interdimensional, inter-promotional.”
On not feeling disrespected by WWE having him go through a tryout process: “I wouldn’t say disrespectful. I understand how the business works. WWE is a machine and sometimes there may be a bubble and they may not know exactly what’s out there. I didn’t take it as disrespect, if anything, I took it as a challenge just to show what I’m about. If they didn’t know me before, they definitely do now or they did when I walked through those doors. I’m going to make a statement anywhere I go. That was a great experience as well. I’m glad I got to do that. I got to meet a lot of people in that company and it was great just being able to work with people so closely that you see on TV every week and see on the PLEs. For me, it was a great learning experience. I didn’t take any slight to it. I understand how the business works. If anything, it was a networking opportunity and exhausting all of my options. I feel like I only grew from that, seeing how they work, what they’re looking for, and seeing the environment that’s there. It’s so different than me coming from the LA Dojo where there are only four of us in a class with Shibata and our teacher can’t speak English. TNA and AEW don’t have a training facility, per se, so to see how they do it, it was a cool way to see how different they do things. It was a positive experience for me overall.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
