LA Knight to challenge Roman Reigns at WWE Crown Jewel

A little over a year ago, LA Knight was a WWE superstar, but he wasn’t drawing a lot of notice. Actually, it might be more fair to say that Max Dupri was a WWE superstar, but wasn’t drawing a lot of notice. Most of his segments, which involved his Maximum Male Models stable of wrestlers, drew no buzz, like someone unplugged the crowd.

Then, Max Dupri was no more. LA Knight (real name Shaun Ricker) beat up the Maximum Male Models and announced he was no longer Dupri, he was LA Knight.

And with that, a star was born. Finally unleashed on the microphone, where he has few peers, Knight electrified the crowd, who quickly began repeating his “L-A-Knight. Yeah!” catchphrase. He moved into the top three in WWE merchandise sales. You can hear people chant “Yeah!” during other matches. While he was booked to lose almost all the time, the crowd remained behind him.

His reward is here: Knight will compete against Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal title at the Crown Jewel premium live event at Mohammed Abdu Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, a source not authorized to speak publicly about the matchup exclusively told The Times. The event will air on Peacock at 10 a.m. PDT.

Other matches on the card so far include Seth “Freakin” Rollins defending the heavyweight title against Drew McIntyre and Rhea Ripley defending the women’s world title against Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler, Zoey Stark and Raquel Rodriguez.