He Was Ripping Off The Rock... Now He's Taking Over The World

LA Knight
NWA

This was a corny, wildly ambitious promo that - given NWA Powerrr was a loving restoration of an '80s studio show, right down to the exact font on the graphics - was impossible to take seriously. If any promotion was playing at being a wrestling league, it was Billy Corgan's literal reenactment.

Drake's "Shoes of a Champion" promo however was class. Clearly a bit tipsy on champers, he loosened up. He didn't try nearly as hard. He improvised a great bit with interview David Marquez when offering him a drink.

"I'm working."

"I'm working too!"

He put himself over, saying that he had the "shoes of a champion". He then paraded his jacket, but repeated the first line instead of saying "jacket of a champion". "Did I say "shoes of a champion"? he said, with a plastered look on his face, before unleashing his most boisterous "Yeah-uh!" yet. If this was all a carefully rehearsed bit, it did not feel that way. If it was, it bordered on genius. Who in that studio wouldn't have dropped everything had Drake poured them a glass then and there?

Did Eli Drake have real charisma or not? He didn't just bob and weave like he was doing a Ric Flair bit. In that moment, he almost channeled him.

A strange thing happened in 2021: after conceding defeat in the Wednesday Night War, Triple H, recognising that AEW had subsumed NXT as the destination for pro wrestling, flirted with a more sports entertainment approach in NXT. Some of this was utterly dire - the supernatural Tian Sha stable was a disaster - but the out-of-nowhere recruitment of Eli Drake, renamed LA Knight, was far more successful than most envisaged.

Knight's feud with Cameron Grimes was fantastic.

CONT'D...(3 of 5)

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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!