It was 2013, and Shaun Ricker, then 10 years into his professional wrestling career, had been chosen for a TNT reality show titled “The Hero” hosted by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Ricker was scheduled to travel to Panama for weeks of filming, and although his trip would be reimbursed, there was one problem: he barely had enough money to get there.
“I had maybe $20 to my name,” Ricker said.
Ricker is now preparing for his first WrestleMania match, 20 years after his journey began. He didn’t make the WWE main roster until he was 39, but he connected with fans and quickly rose to stardom over the past year as the LA Knight.
He reached the peak of his career at age 41 and is set to take part in WWE’s biggest show of the year this weekend, alongside none other than The Rock.
“Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I couldn’t let it stop me,” Ricker said.
“Our crowd got behind (Knight) and attached him to this rocket,” added Mark Calaway, better known in the ring as The Undertaker.
When Knight’s entrance music hits, thousands of fans stand up and shout his name and slogan: “LA-Knight… YEAH!” (Fans give him extra cheers after he starts his promos with another catchphrase: “Let me talk to you!”) He is one of the best selling wrestlers in wwe merchandise store.
His airport experiences these days involve fans asking for photos and autographs.
“He’s a phenomenon,” said WWE producer Nick Aldis, who also serves as on-screen general manager of Friday’s “SmackDown” television show.
Ricker, like so many others in the industry, fell in love with professional wrestling during the “Attitude Era” of the late 1990s and early 2000s. of his parents. High school friends in Hagerstown, Maryland, suggested he become a wrestler. At age 20, he moved to Cincinnati to train for the Heartland Wrestling Association.
Most wrestlers don’t make a lot of money when they start out. They pay for the training, and potential bookings could bring in a few hundred dollars, if anything. Ricker had to find side jobs to get by. There was telephone customer service. There was the sawmill. There was security. He worked in various restaurants. He has even makes advertisements.
Ricker traveled to Los Angeles in 2009 to develop his wrestling career. While traveling from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, the transmission of his 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme failed. The obstacles kept piling up.
“What am I going to do?” » Ricker asked. “There have been times in Los Angeles where my car has been towed due to unpaid parking tickets. I had no money to pay these damn fines. I didn’t have a car for eight, nine months. I had occasion to think that maybe this wasn’t for me. But I knew I had to keep moving forward, one way or another.
He managed to land side gigs, including an appearance on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” He saved money wherever he could.
But Ricker also knew he was very good at professional wrestling. He didn’t do any flashy acrobatic moves, but his strikes looked good and he could talk on the mic with the best of them. He is also arrogant, both in character and in real life.
“I don’t really know how to say it better than I could say it (I was good),” he said. “You look at WWE and you’d say, ‘I 100 percent belong here.'”
He came close to signing with WWE on several occasions. He tried out for “WWE Tough Enough,” the company’s reality show, in 2004. More than 100 contestants were whittled down to eight contestants and two alternates. Ricker was chosen as a replacement, but did not receive the call-up. He was invited to appear as an extra and compete in a non-televised tag team match at a WWE taping in 2008. It went well and he was invited back the following week.
Ricker, however, showed up an hour late after spending his day looking for a physical therapist to treat a shoulder injury. WWE didn’t speak to him again for three years, when he made another appearance as an extra in 2011.
“There are so many little stories where I was there and it didn’t happen because of XYZ,” he said.
After his reality show journey, Ricker eventually signed with WWE’s developmental program, NXT, in 2013, but he was released a year later. He certainly clashed with the head coach, saying they “didn’t see eye to eye.” Ricker gained a reputation for being difficult to work with.
“I’m a grown man and a proud man,” Ricker said. “If I’m pushed, I’ll fight back.”
Ricker finally saw his stardom grow in 2015 when he landed in Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling/Impact Wrestling. He won the promotion’s World Championship in 2017. He made a lot of money, enough to turn down chances to return to NXT because it would have resulted in a pay cut.
“He has verbal skills that you can’t teach,” said Aldis, who wrestled with Ricker in TNA/Impact. “One of the most important qualities you need to succeed in this industry is conviction. Very quickly he said, ‘You’re going to worry about me.’
Ricker began to clash with TNA/Impact management and was fired in 2019. He joined Billy Corgan’s National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 2019 and continued to move forward. Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened in 2020 and almost all professional wrestling came to a temporary halt. At age 37, it looked like the end of Ricker’s wrestling career. The calls weren’t coming through and he had burned a lot of bridges.
“I thought it was over,” he said.
With the window closing, he took a flyer and sent an email to Hall of Famer and WWE manager Paul “Triple H” Levesque in late 2020. To Ricker’s surprise, the WWE was still interested and he found a way to get back into NXT. A few months later, WWE decided to move its developmental program away from independent wrestlers like him and instead look for college athletes.
“I just got there,” Ricker said.
Ricker took off, quickly becoming a star in NXT as LA Knight with his trash talk and overall demeanor. Triple H and Shawn Michaels, who ran NXT, loved it. But when Ricker was called up to the WWE main roster in 2022, he was recast as a modeling agent named Max Dupri. It was Ricker’s talent that made the gimmick entertaining, especially when he hated it.
In the summer of 2022, he returned to LA Knight. There wasn’t really a creative plan, but it was something he could work with. A few months later, he was placed in a feud with a returning Bray Wyatt. Given his time on television, Ricker began to get reactions from the crowd. From that moment on, the reactions grew stronger and stronger. In professional wrestling, TV time is a currency and he continued to earn more.
“If (you have) 30 seconds or two minutes, you have to make every moment count,” Ricker said, “and I’ve done my best to make sure that’s what happens.”
“He has a lot of personality and passion, and those two things will take you far,” The Undertaker added.
Ricker didn’t make last year’s WrestleMania card, but when WWE visited London for the premium Money in the Bank (PLE) live event a few months later, LA Knight received some of the biggest reactions from the crowd, especially his confrontation with the social media star. and WWE wrestler Logan Paul. At SummerSlam at Ford Field in Detroit, Knight became the face of a new Slim Jim sponsorship for WWE and won the “Slim Jim Battle Royal”, a match essentially created for him to score a stadium victory. .
“He’s been doing this for a long time. He knows what he’s doing,” said multi-time WWE Champion Sheamus. “He really immersed himself in this character and people responded. The most important thing in this business is getting a reaction. He does an excellent job.
The rocket continued into 2023. He teamed with superstar John Cena for a tag team match at WWE’s Fastlane PLE in October. The following month, Knight won a championship match against Roman Reigns at Crown Jewel PLE in Saudi Arabia.
On the eve of his first WrestleMania, Ricker achieved the dream he spent two decades pursuing. Yet despite having one of the fastest progressions of all time in recent WWE memory, there’s still a lot left to accomplish – like championships on the resume.
“I want to create moments,” he said. “I want to create a legacy.”
In December, Ricker received the key to the city from his hometown of Hagerstown. Ricker thought a handful of people might show up, but hundreds came out in the cold and the event was moved to a larger space. He’ll have plenty of friends and family in Philadelphia for WrestleMania, where he’ll face AJ Styles in a match not far from where his dream began.
He and Johnson reunited in person at a recent taping of “SmackDown.” Ricker said Johnson commented on how far he had come.
“Some would say it’s late. Some would say it’s just in time,” Ricker said. “It doesn’t really matter at this point. It’s WrestleMania 40 and I’m in it.
(Top photo courtesy of WWE)