Maryland Native to Wrestle Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship on Saturday

Before he was LA Knight, one of the hottest superstars in professional wrestling today, Shaun Ricker was a kid growing up in Hagerstown, Maryland. He graduated from North Hagerstown High School (class of 2000), where he was in the band and ran track, but always dreamed of becoming a professional wrestler. On Saturday, he has his biggest match ever– taking on WWE Universal Champion, Roman Reigns, at WWE Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia.

Though he appears to be outspoken now, as his LA Knight persona has been compared to a modern-day version of Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock, Ricker remembers how different he was when he was growing up in Hagerstown. “I was a very shy kid, but I always wanted to be a performer. I was that kid that was so shy when I was at my grandma’s house, I would whisper in my mom or dad’s ear, ‘Could you ask her for a cookie?’ Those hand mixers, when I was a kid, I thought the metal mixer part looked like a microphone so I would take those, stand behind a door and I would sing and dance. I figured if I was behind a door, nobody would see me, nobody could hear me. It was like I was invisible.” he said in a since-archived interview with the Ottawa Citizen.

Ricker went to wrestling school in Cincinnati after graduating from high school. He worked as a server at Ruby Tuesday while he trained and got his first “dark match” (non-televised match) with the WWE on May 5th, 2006 when he teamed with another newcomer named Jon Moxley to face The Big Show in a handicap match. Moxley went on to become WWE champion as Dean Ambrose and is currently one of the major stars of the AEW promotion.

After a few years of working on his craft in the independent circuit, Ricker found himself on a wrestling-based reality show hosted by The Rock, called The Hero. A strong performance on the show led to him signing to WWE’s developmental brand, NXT. He only stuck around for a year or so and found himself back on the independent circuit and with smaller promotions honing his craft. He made a name for himself at Impact Wrestling as Eli Drake, where he became a star for the promotion.

After a few years at Impact and later the NWA, Ricker found himself back in WWE’s developmental promotion, NXT– this time as LA Knight. He proved to be a good hand and was called up to the main roster, where he soon became a manager known as Max Dupri for the Maximum Male Model agency. That didn’t last long as he reverted to LA Knight and began a feud with the late Bray Wyatt that would culminate with a match at the Royal Rumble in January 2023. The feud would expose new fans to Ricker’s LA Knight persona, slowly turning him into the star he knew he’d eventually be.

In the last year, LA Knight has become one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the world. He has jumped to the top of the WWE and will be challenging The Bloodline’s Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship– a title Reigns has held for over three years. While many don’t expect Knight to be crowned the new champion at the event, a lot of people believe he may eventually become the face of the organization with Saturday’s match being the start of something even bigger. Make Maryland proud, LA Knight!

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