It was 2013, and Shaun Ricker, then 10 years into his professional wrestling career, had been cast on a TNT reality show called “The Hero,” hosted by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Ricker needed to fly to Panama for weeks of filming, and though his travel would be reimbursed, there was an issue: He barely had enough money to get there in the first place.
Advertisement
“I had maybe $20 to my name,” Ricker said.
Now Ricker is preparing for his first WrestleMania match, 20 years into his journey. He didn’t make it to WWE’s main roster until he was 39 years old, but he’s made a connection with fans and has fast-forwarded into stardom over the past year as LA Knight.
He’s reached the peak of his career at 41, set to participate this weekend in WWE’s biggest show of the year — headlined by none other than The Rock.
“Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I couldn’t let myself stop,” Ricker said.
“Our audience got behind (Knight) and strapped him onto that rocket,” added Mark Calaway, better known in the ring as The Undertaker.
When Knight’s entrance music hits, thousands of fans jump to their feet and yell his name and catchphrase: “L-A-Knight … YEAH!” (The fans give additional cheers after he begins his promos with another catchphrase: “Let me talk to ya!”) He’s been among the top-selling wrestlers in the WWE merchandise store.
His airport experiences these days involve fans asking for photos and autographs.
“It’s a phenomenon,” said WWE producer Nick Aldis, who also serves as the on-screen general manager for Friday’s television show, “SmackDown.”
Ricker, like so many others in the business, fell in love with pro wrestling during the “Attitude Era” of the late 1990s and early 2000s. He’d act out moves on his parents’ bed. High school friends in Hagerstown, Md., suggested he become a wrestler. At 20 years old, he moved to Cincinnati to train at Heartland Wrestling Association.
Most wrestlers don’t make much money when they start. They pay for training, and eventual bookings could result in a few hundred bucks, if that. Ricker had to find side jobs to get by. There was telephone customer service. There was the lumber mill. There was security. He worked at various restaurants. He even did commercials.
Advertisement
Ricker in 2009 drove to Los Angeles to expand his wrestling career. During a trip from Las Vegas to L.A., the transmission on his 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme failed. The hurdles kept piling.
“What am I going to do?” Ricker asked. “There were times in L.A. I got my car towed because of unpaid parking tickets. I didn’t have the money to pay the damn parking tickets. I didn’t have a car for eight, nine months. There was an opportunity to think maybe this just isn’t for me. But I knew to keep moving forward, somehow.”
He managed to land acting side gigs, including an appearance in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” He saved money anywhere he could.
But Ricker also knew he was really good at pro wrestling. He didn’t do the flashy acrobatic moves, but his strikes looked good, and he could talk on the microphone with the best of them. He’s also cocky, both in character and real life.
“I don’t really know how to say it better than I could tell (I was good),” he said. “You watch WWE and you’d say, ‘I 100 percent fit here.’”
He got close to signing with WWE a few times. He tried out for “WWE Tough Enough,” the company’s reality show, in 2004. More than 100 participants were whittled down to eight contestants and two alternates. Ricker was selected as an alternate but didn’t get the call-up. He was invited to participate as an extra and work a non-TV 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 work on a shoulder injury. WWE wouldn’t talk to him again for three years, when he made another appearance as a background extra in 2011.
“So many of these little stories where I was there and it didn’t happen because of XYZ,” he said.
After his reality show trip, Ricker finally signed with WWE’s developmental program, NXT, in 2013, but he was released just a year later. He admittedly butted heads with the head trainer, saying they “did not see eye to eye.” Ricker gained a reputation of being difficult to work with.
Advertisement
“I’m a grown man and a proud man,” Ricker said. “If I’m getting pushed, I’m going to push back.”
Ricker finally saw his stardom rise in 2015 when he landed in Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling/Impact Wrestling. He won the promotion’s world championship in 2017. He was making good money, enough where he turned down chances to go back to NXT because it would’ve been a pay cut.
“He has verbal skills 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 went, ‘You’re going to care about me.’”
View this post on Instagram
Ricker began to clash with TNA/Impact management and was fired in 2019. He moved to Billy Corgan’s National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 2019 and continued to move forward. Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened in 2020, and nearly all of pro wrestling temporarily halted. At 37 years old, it looked like the end of the line for Ricker’s wrestling career. Calls weren’t coming, and he’d burned a lot of bridges.
“I thought it was over,” he said.
With the window closing, he took a flier and emailed WWE Hall of Famer and executive Paul “Triple H” Levesque in the latter part of 2020. To Ricker’s surprise, there was still interest from WWE, and he found a way 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 made it in there,” Ricker said.
Ricker took off, quickly becoming a star in NXT as LA Knight with his trash talking 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’s a credit to Ricker’s talent that he made the gimmick entertaining — particularly when he hated it.
Advertisement
During the summer of 2022, he was reverted back to LA Knight. There wasn’t much of a creative plan, but it was something he could work with. Months later, he was placed in a feud with a returning Bray Wyatt. Given TV time, Ricker began to get crowd reactions. From that point on, the reactions got louder and louder. In pro wrestling, TV time is currency, and he kept earning more.
“If (you’ve) got 30 seconds or two minutes, you’ve got to make every bit count,” Ricker said, “and I’ve done my damnedest to make sure that’s what happens.”
“He’s got tons of personality and passion, and those two things will take you a long way,” The Undertaker added.
Ricker didn’t make last year’s WrestleMania card, but when WWE went to London for the Money in the Bank premium live event (PLE) a few months later, LA Knight received some of the largest crowd reactions, particularly his faceoff with social media star and WWE wrestler Logan Paul. During SummerSlam at Detroit’s Ford Field, 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 get a stadium-show win.
“He’s done this for a long time. He knows what he’s doing,” said Sheamus, a multitime WWE champion. “He really dove into that character, and people responded. What’s most important in this business is you get a reaction. He’s doing a great job.”
The rocket continued through 2023. He teamed with superstar John Cena for a tag-team match at WWE’s Fastlane PLE in October. The following month, Knight got a championship match against Roman Reigns at the Crown Jewel PLE in Saudi Arabia.
Now on the eve of his first WrestleMania, Ricker has reached the dream he spent two decades working toward. Still, despite coming off one of the fastest-rising runs of anyone in recent WWE memory, there’s a lot left to accomplish — like championships on the résumé.
Advertisement
“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 will face AJ Styles in a match not far from where his dream began.
He and Johnson caught up in person at a recent “SmackDown” taping. Ricker said Johnson commented on how he’d come a long way.
“Some would say it’s late. Some would say it’s right on 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)