9 Wrestling Gimmicks That Took YEARS To Get Over
1. LA Knight Has Been YEAH-ing Since His Triple H Workout DVD Days
While "EVERYBODY!" is now very much talking about SmackDown's one and only 'Megastar', it took a solid decade of trial and error to create the version of LA Knight seen blowing the roof off of arenas around the globe today.
As Knight himself noted in a recent appearance on the After the Bell podcast (via WrestlingInc), he's been playing a pretty similar character for around 13 years at this point. And a lot of the things he'd play with and attempt to add to his gimmick were taken from his personality in real-life.
On top of the "EVERYBODY!" part of his schtick coming from his time working in a restaurant years ago, with Knight shouting that instead of "corner!" whenever he was walking around exactly that, his iconic "YEAH!" has also been a part of his personality since his first run in WWE all the way back in 2013/14.
I can't believe this exists.
LA Knight shouted "YEAH!" during Triple H's workout DVD in 2014. ?@YEAHMovement_ @RealLAKnight @TripleH pic.twitter.com/fKvkGQirw2
— Danny (@DannyBaratheon) July 9, 2023
With Knight appearing in a Triple H workout DVD in the time before eventually showing up as Eli Drake in Impact Wrestling and the NWA, someone recently spotted him actually uttering one of his unmistakable "YEAH!" cries as he finished off a few crunches.
It took almost ten years for this first "YEAH!" movement seed to grow into the most over word in the industry, of course. But even all the way back in 2014, this charismatic lad was proving he had the ability to upstage one of the biggest names in WWE history with something as simple as a "YEAH!"