Hot Take: LA Knight Doesn't Need Top Guy Status to Remain Popular With WWE Fans

LA Knight has already peaked in WWE.

That's a statement that might cause many fans to recoil or start arguments. And while technically, possibly not true—would it really be that bad?

Maybe Knight goes on to win one of the promotion's very top titles, sure. But he's had one heck of a run already as arguably the most over main-eventer in WWE.

He topped this off recently in the show-ending spot against Roman Reigns for the unified titles at Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia, where he very much looked like he belonged.

Recent comments from Triple H during a chat on

"Greg & The Morning Buzz" (h/t Liam Crowley of comicbook.com) deserves a raise of the eyebrow too.

"I look at LA Knight right now. He's been in this business for a long time. I knew him in the very beginning," Triple H said. "He was in NXT early in the system. He'll admit this, a lot to his own doing, he caused himself to not be in it, but he kept grinding, kept grinding, kept grinding. And here now, he is sort of running towards the end of his career and all of a sudden, he's making it and becoming a big deal."

That "end of his career" sticks out, considering Knight is already 41 years old. Wrestler careers seem to have extended more than ever lately, but it's not exactly a secret that Knight is a late-bloomer in the WWE sense.

And as fans surely understood going into his match with Reigns, Knight wasn't going to exit it as the winner. And at this point, it's hard to blame WWE for sticking to this course of action. He's as over as it gets and undoubtedly moving boatloads of merchandise and that's not a threat to change if he doesn't win a top title.

Part of that is to WWE's credit after a smart, slow-burn of a build-up to that point. He went form a middling faction member to slowly working mid-tier feuds to getting rubs from the likes of John Cena, working alongside Cody Rhodes and the Bloodline to eventually taking on Reigns.

There's enough proverbial meat on the bone to keep Knight near the top of every weekly show and PLE that this doesn't have the potential to turn into a Daniel Bryan-hijacking deja vu experience.

Part of that is a testament to Knight as a performer, too. Having each and every audience so under his control means he can prevent this and keep fans engaged with whatever he's doing next.

Case in point, a high-profile feud with Logan Paul over the U.S. title seems like a no-brainer. The promos and matches would of course be excellent and worthy of main-event spots, but the sheer promotional sense it makes to use Paul's global platform to advertise the fact WWE has this throwback Attitude Era-styled guy like Knight is genius.

And sure, WWE could really embrace things here and just go with it. Knight could win the Royal Rumble and if we really want to buy into it, instead of challenging for the Raw top title, eventually be the one to take down Reigns and end the historic reign.

But frankly, there's not much upside other than WWE earning the appreciation of fans. He's already got them invested and moving merch. Putting one of the top titles on him runs the risk of the classic hiccup that is fans turning on a champion quickly—look at Seth Rollins right now. Why risk messing up a good thing with a title win?

The landscape doesn't really seem to permit it either. Realistically, Reigns might not even drop the title at the next WrestleMania. He's got possible matches with The Rock, Rhodes, Jey Uso and perhaps even Solo Sikoa to get through. And based on those dominoes, Rhodes, Jey, Gunther and others are all in line to fight for Rollins' title.

That outlook puts a little more steam behind the idea that Knight has "peaked" in the sense he's not going to be the guy as a very top champion technically. But in a WWE where the U.S. title is important and the Intercontinental title has never looked better in the modern era, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

If the peak is say, Knight matching the open-challenge era of John Cena's U.S. title reign from all those years ago, well, that would be pretty hard to complain about.

With the way Knight has captured audiences—and shown WWE just how thirsty fans are for that style of Superstar and era—the word peak doesn't have to be a bad thing.