LA Knight has captured a sizable audience in WWE over the last several years, building off the skills he developed working elsewhere across the industry. While many aspects of his WWE presentation are original, there is one holdover from his time in TNA Wrestling, which Knight recently described during an appearance on “Insight with Chris Van Vliet.”
When he arrived in TNA, the man now known as Knight went from using his real name, Shawn Ricker, to adopting the moniker Eli Drake. For a while, Knight was part of a trio that also included current WWE stars Drew McIntyre and Tonga Loa. Knight felt he was a distant third in the group, in terms of what the company saw in the wrestlers, but he was determined to prove them wrong. He got an opportunity to do just that when TNA officials decided to turn him heel and sent him out to cut a promo.
“My thought was: ‘You haven’t heard from me in months. You probably don’t even know my name,'” Knight said. “So I go, ‘My name … is Eli Drake.’ And I’m putting extra emphasis on it because I want you to remember it because you probably haven’t heard it even though I’ve been here for five months. And at that point, when I did it the first time, I was like, ‘I’ll just say it that way every time I say my name the rest of the promo.'”
Initially, Knight thought the idea was likely just limited to that promo. However, a conversation with someone backstage convinced him to keep doing it, and he soon built on it by pointing his finger along with his emphasis on each syllable.
That has since carried over to Knight’s time in WWE, where he still adds that same emphasis to his new name. While he wasn’t adamant that his new moniker needed to be three syllables, it wound up working out that way.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “Insight” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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