L.A. Knight talks about teaming with John Cena at Fastlane, his long road to success, his goal to be WWE Champion

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The following are highlights of L.A. Knight’s interview with Shakiel Mahjouri from CBS Sports provided to PWTorch.com.

•On teaming with John Cena at Fastlane:

“In a weird way, I’ve got no business being here. Looking just a year ago at where I was and what I was doing, what a hell of a turnaround. It’s damn near unheard of. It’s kind of a crazy situation. I’m not the best at letting myself really feel that. Maybe 10 years down the road when I look back. But right now in this situation, I’m just so — I don’t know if you’d say maniacally focused or whatever it is on making sure that everything hits the mark and that everything is the way that I want it to be. It’s tough for me to step back and just be like, ‘Wow, this is great!’ Occasionally I might have that thought, but it’s very fleeting.”

•On the long road to success:

“I have been at this for so long… That’s the craziest part about this. In a weird way, it’s like overnight success. But it was also 20 years in the making to get to an overnight success. It’s such a juxtaposition in a strange way. I still have a habit of looking over my shoulder and waiting for somebody to pull the rug out from under me at any point in time.

“I’m either waiting for the rug pull or I’m waiting to jump up and defend the rug pull because I’m used to, ‘No, no, no’ and me having to push, ‘Yeah, yeah!’ It’s me having to create my own opportunities and even when I’m now put into bigger opportunities, it’s still not a point where I can relax.”

•On Paul Bearer’s confidence in him:

“Pretty incredible… He had left me a little written message and a couple of little things that he just wanted me to have. Part of the message was that he loved me and he knew I was going to go on to do big things and that kind of stuff. That was insane that he was thinking of me at that moment.

“The fact that this guy that I watched growing up was thinking about me at that time, that was that was crazy. That was an enormous thing to consider and an enormous thing to think about. I feel like I’m bastardizing it to make it about myself, but in a weird way, it’s like my work had paid off in a certain sense that I’d garnered that kind of respect and friendship from somebody in the business.”

•On whether he’ll ever be satisfied?

“I don’t know that with my personality I’ll ever be satisfied. I have such a habit of nitpicking everything and getting down to nitty-gritty details… Obviously, for me, I want to be at the top of the mountain. There are a lot of hurdles to get there but I always wanted to be there.

“If you’re not aiming to be the WWE Champion, if you’re not aiming to be that top guy, the face of the company and in the conversation as far as some of the greats, that would be at least close to that goal line. Maybe it would get me there. Maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know. But that’s kind of where I look at like, ‘Okay, that, at least for me, is where I’m trying to go.'”

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