But in March 2021, the man that caught Michaels' eye wasn't a rookie. Far from it, in fact. A 38-year-old Shaun Ricker was in his second stint with NXT, still looking for his breakthrough moment.
Ricker, who goes by LA Knight, had the same goals as his younger counterparts. He wanted to get the call-up to the main roster to perform on Raw and Smackdown, the flagship shows of WWE.
"I would tell them all the time that there is this guy," Michaels told ESPN, referring to Knight, sitting to his left. "When people say a WWE guy or a Vince guy, he was f---ing it. I was trying to tell [them], lose the three-eight. He never looked to me like he had any mileage on him.
Knight possesses a chiseled jaw and a muscular 6-foot-1, 240-pound frame. Toss him a microphone, and it's not long before the crowd chants together in unison, hanging on every word and waiting with anticipation for his trademark "Yeah!" delivered with gusto.
Despite the action star look and charisma, Michaels said Knight was on a cut list "several times" while at the performance center. To save Knight's job and give him more time in NXT to prove his capability, Michaels would say he couldn't be released because he was in a storyline.
"I never lied, I did always have him in stuff. But there were a couple of people that I knew from this mythical age thing, wasn't fitting their qualifications, but I always kept them in storylines. And so my excuse was, we can't get rid of him now."
Michaels said he was also allowed to keep a core of wrestlers with experience to teach the younger wrestlers. But even then, Knight was on thin ice.
"They never f---ing paid attention to us," Michaels said. "I was trying to finesse a certain someone, but all he would see is the one number, the three-eight. Someone who's damn near my age, and I'm having an argument with them. Were you old when you were 38?"
Vince McMahon has been in charge of WWE's creative direction since he bought and renamed the promotion the WWF in 1982. His son-in-law, WWE Hall of Famer Paul "Triple H" Levesque, began overseeing WWE's talent development department in 2000 and founded NXT. Triple H was also the executive producer of NXT until the brand's 2.0 overhaul in September 2021, when Michaels took over. Since July 2022, Triple H has been responsible for WWE's creative direction.
"The first time I went off to the dark match, I caught his eye for some reason," Knight said, referring to a WWE official. "And he said, 'Who is this guy?' And that blew my mind because I'm kind of top of the card here."
"He paid no attention. I'm just trying to see if I can get you on 'Main Event' again," Michaels recounted to Knight, referring to the weekly one-hour syndicated program.
They're paying attention now.
Now 41, Knight seems destined to be featured at WrestleMania 40. Saturday's Royal Rumble event in St. Petersburg, Florida, is the unofficial start of the Road to WrestleMania.
And it's where Knight will wrestle on arguably his biggest stage yet, a Fatal Four-Way for Roman Reigns' WWE undisputed Universal championship. Randy Orton and AJ Styles, aged 43 and 46, will also compete for the company's top prize in that match.
It has been an 11-year winding journey for the self-proclaimed "megastar" that included Knight being released during his first tenure with NXT in 2014 and issues with leadership along the way. But how did it all go sideways in the first place?
BORN AND RAISED in Hagerstown, Maryland, a town 72 miles from the White House, Knight began wrestling training in Cincinnati shortly after graduating high school in 2003. He was 20 years old then, and Knight worked at a lumber mill and a Ruby Tuesday to support his dream.
Later that year, he began wrestling under the name Deuce for the Heartland Wrestling Association. After 10 years on the independent scene, he joined WWE in May 2013 as an NXT signee, performing under the ring name Slate Randall. The run lasted about a year, when he was unceremoniously released in August 2014.
Dave Bailey, who was then the general manager of the WWE Performance Center, sat him down and delivered the news: Good luck in your future endeavors.
"We think you're immensely talented. This has nothing to do with your talent," Knight recalls Bailey saying. "There's a perception about you [that you're difficult to work with]. And we need that perception to go away."
The wrestling world is small, and Knight slowly learned the issue. He heard a rumor, one he denies, that he tried to fight Bill DeMott, who was the lead trainer at the WWE Performance Center. DeMott, best known for his WCW run in the 90s as Hugh Morrus, resigned from WWE in March 2015 amid allegations of misconduct from a dozen-plus trainees.
WWE released a statement at the time that it found no wrongdoing. DeMott also denied those allegations.
Knight remembers being told by DeMott, "I expect to hate you." Knight said he attempted to meet with DeMott occasionally to keep things on track, but between those meetings, Knight said he heard DeMott bad-mouthing him.
"Eventually, I'd just come in and be like, 'Hey Bill, let's just talk. What's the heat?' We'd baby-face it, move on. But [once] he asked where Gorilla [position] was, and I was like, 'Gorilla's here, the locker rooms are down there.' And I walked away to continue unloading the truck."
Shortly after he walked away, Knight was told by "three or four people" that DeMott muttered, "I hate that guy."
"And so I'm frustrated at the time because I'm sitting on the sideline, not doing stuff," Knight said. "I'm watching guys just start at the same time, go in, and I'm like, I'm obviously not serving myself here. So I was like, 'I'm going to go talk to him again and just be like, look, what's the deal?' This is probably two weeks before I got fired. And I said, 'I'm prepared to quit at this point, so I'm going to go in and just talk to him straight.'"
Knight walked into DeMott's office, closed the door, and said, "Bill, we've got to talk. What's the heat? I know that you said this. We don't have to like each other, but if you don't like me to a point where I'm not going to progress, then I need to just go."
"I can't get caught up in that high school bulls---," Knight recalled DeMott saying.
"At some point then we just kind of shake hands, we go a separate way," Knight said.
Shortly after, Knight began hearing from wrestlers inside and outside WWE that he tried to fight DeMott. Knight said there was no physical altercation, noting the cameras around the performance center to serve as proof.
"It's like being in court and the cop says, 'You sped.' And I said, 'No, I didn't.' OK, well still you got to pay the fine," said Knight. "And so my ass was gone, and as far as I knew that was the end of the road."
DeMott declined to elaborate on Knight's comments to ESPN.
"While I'm sure I could add great insight to his 'issues' the first go-round, I do my best to stay away from conflict and finger pointing," DeMott said. "I'm glad he is doing well, but I will take a pass (respectfully) on this topic."
FOLLOWING HIS RELEASE from WWE, Knight latched on with Total Nonstop Action (TNA) as Eli Drake.
Knight knew he was good enough. Confidence was never an issue. But he needed another chance to prove he could make it on the biggest stage. Knight said he was earning six figures annually in TNA and living in the Hollywood Hills, but it still ate at him that his initial run in NXT didn't lead to something more.
The issue wasn't his talent or look.The problem was something else.
"I have a habit of hearing when I walk in a room, people just aren't going to like me," Knight deadpanned.
Norman Smiley, a trainer at the Performance Center and former wrestler, put it another way.
"Some people might interpret it as being cocky," Smiley said. "But he was assured of himself, which is what you need in this big, big business. The Rock is not insecure. Stone Cold's not insecure, Taker's not insecure. Shawn Michaels is not insecure. So in order to be at the top of the mountain, you need to have confidence."
The frustration gnawed at Knight as he toiled along, feeling he belonged in WWE, when he reached a breaking point. He was called on to do motion capture for WWE's annual 2K Sports video game from 2015 to 2021. Knight, who was jettisoned away from WWE, was now a stand-in for WWE's stars in a video game. It was all too much for him.
"There were so many times where I was motion capturing for guys where I'm like -- and no disrespect to them -- how the f--- is this guy there, and I'm not?" Knight asked. "Somebody should be mo-capping me. I would be almost miserable at that job.
"It was very frustrating because it's like, I should be in this. I shouldn't be motioning this; I should be f---ing in it. And that always drove me kind of nuts."
That sense of disrespect only served to fuel Knight. He transitioned to Impact and became a champion there as well. All the while, Knight said he had "literal" dreams of being back at the WWE Performance Center.
His journey to a second run with WWE started in 2015, when he had initial discussions with WWE officials. At the time, he said Impact owed him money, so he was trying to break free from his contract.
"But then [Impact] ended up making good on that," he said. "They paid me and then they actually ended up giving me a brand-new contract for a bunch more money. And so I was just like, 'Give me a year.' I've never seen money like this before."
When Knight approached WWE officials in October 2020 about a reunion, he recalled being told, "We're going to talk about money, and you need to be realistic."
"I said, 'If you're only going to offer me $55,000,' which was what it was at the time, 'that's a major, major downgrade of my lifestyle right now,'" Knight said in that conversation. "I said, 'But I'm at the ceiling where I'm at right now. I can take the pay cut on the bet that I'm going to turn that into a lot more if that's all you have to offer me.' And as soon as I said that, [a WWE official] gets back to me and he's like, 'I like that attitude. It's going to be more than that.'"
Four months later, Knight debuted on NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day.
MICHAELS KNOWS THE feeling all too well. The innate self-belief that you're meant to be a star, but you're being held back from grabbing that elusive brass ring that McMahon often refers to.
Michaels was told he was too small. That he was a tag-team guy following his impressive run with Marty Jannetty as The Rockers in the 80s. But he never stopped believing that he was destined to be not just a singles wrestler, but the guy. Even if it took him four years to appear in his first pay-per-view singles match.
"I was the guy who wasn't supposed to make it," Michaels said. "That drives me nuts. It's pissed me off for 40 f---ing years. But I do what we all do: We repress it, we use it and they benefit."
Michaels now finds himself on the other side, able to provide opportunities to those wrestlers who deserve a chance, too, even if it takes longer than he'd like.
"That was always my biggest frustration. I felt like a Vince guy for years and years," Knight said. "What the f--- is the deal?"
Michaels said he pushed to land Knight on a dark match on "Raw" or "SmackDown" just to buy time for Knight and get him in front of other WWE officials.
"If nothing else," Michaels said, "they trust my judgment."
At long last, Michaels received the call he hoped for. Knight was being promoted to the main roster.
THE MAIN ROSTER call-up didn't start as Knight imagined. He had a new calling card -- Max Dupri, the manager of a newly formed faction called Maximum Male Models.
"I thought they were ribbing me," Knight recalls. "I'm like, 'What?' They were like, 'Yeah, you used to be a model, but now you have an agency. And I'm like, 'f--- is this?'"
"It took a left turn of silliness, and I was just like, 'this is not at all what we had talked about or discussed,'" Knight said. "And I don't know whether that was on the wrestlers or what, but then I'm just like, I'm trying to keep it in a serious vein so we can move up the card.
"I mean, there's a certain point where you get pigeonholed into just comedy and you're stuck. You hit the ceiling pretty quick. I don't want to be stuck there. ... If it's all comedy from start to finish, God, you're dead."
That was the case for Mace and Mansoor, the men Knight was on-screen managing, but Knight's enormous charisma and ability to jump off the screen caught the eye of WWE brass. By September, he was handing out a beating on the now-released duo before he revealed himself as LA Knight to the roaring approval of the WWE universe.
Suddenly, Knight was off to the races, even if he wasn't yet being pushed on WWE television. But that would soon change.
The break Knight had been waiting for most of his professional life came in the form of a feud with Bray Wyatt, who died in August 2023. One of WWE's most popular stars, Wyatt returned to major fanfare at Survivor Series in November 2022 after time off and was quickly paired together with Knight for his first program during the comeback.
Wyatt, one of the more dynamic personalities in WWE history, didn't always provide his opponents ample opportunity to shine, as some of Wyatt's matches were gimmicky.
But Knight's promo work and underrated in-ring work with Wyatt were so impressive that fans took to him. Soon, Knight's rise became meteoric. He wasn't even booked for WrestleMania 39 in Los Angeles, but fans started chanting his name at SmackDown one night before as he competed in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. That was the first signal that Knight wouldn't be denied this time around at age 40.
Diamond Dallas Page can relate. The WWE Hall of Famer was the on-screen manager of The Fabulous Freebirds in WCW in January 1991. He didn't make his TV wrestling debut until November of that year. And it was another six-and-a-half years until DDP enjoyed his own meteoric rise that culminated with a victory over the "Macho Man" Randy Savage at Spring Stampede, DDP's first PPV main event. He was 41 years old.
DDP watched in amazement as a few people in the crowd threw up his trademark Diamond Cutter sign. Then, a few more fans. Before long, it was an entire arena.
"I'm looking at [LA Knight], and I'm going, that cat is on the same trajectory as what I have and the people getting with him," said DDP. "It's like a dream come true, and it becomes completely surreal.
"You enjoy the moment. You try to keep your feet on the ground, don't believe the hype."
As fans gravitated to him in increasingly greater numbers, another surreal moment came. At Night of Champions in May, one month after WrestleMania, the crowd in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, started to chant for him. And they were chanting it at Triple H, the Hall of Fame wrestler who oversees WWE's creative direction.
"I'm not even on the show, I'm not advertised for the show, but they're telling him right to his face, this is what we want," said Knight. "OK, maybe it's for real at this point."
Triple H listened to the fans, and Knight was suddenly featured on TV. He threatened to win the Money in the Bank ladder match in July in London. At SummerSlam, he won a battle royal. One month later, he defeated The Miz in his first singles victory at one of WWE's monthly premium events. Knight went on to team with John Cena in October in another win, and he even challenged Reigns for the title in Saudi Arabia, where the fans once willed him to the main-event scene.
This was no flash in the pan. This was years and years of hard work -- and patience -- realized.
Knight's wild ride isn't over yet. If you ask him -- or Michaels -- it's just getting started.
"A lot of guys at that age who've been through this grind, either already had a run, they've had multiple surgeries, injuries, all this kind of s---," Knight said. "I'm very fortunate that even though I've done this for a long time, I haven't ever had a real injury [knocks on wood], never had a real surgery [knocks three more times]. I don't think I take unnecessary risks."
"You are a smart worker," said Michaels.
That validation, from one of the greatest ever, with a similar story, is all the fuel Knight needs to keep going.
