At WWE SummerSlam 2024, LA Knight defeated Logan Paul, ending the longest United States Championship reign of the past decade. While Knight has a long way to go before he has a longer reign than the Maverick, he has already surpassed Paul in one notable metric.
On the September 20, 2024, edition of WWE SmackDown, Knight retained the star-spangled strap with a hard-fought victory over Andrade. With this win, Knight has now surpassed Paul in terms of televised title defenses. The megastar’s 49-day reign has seen three successful title defenses on TV (equal to one every 16.3 days).
Paul only had two successful title defenses aired over his 273-day reign (one every 136.5 days) with his defense at the Royal Rumble against Kevin Owens ending in a disqualification. Throughout his reign, many fans debated whether WWE was right to put the gold on the part-time Superstar with Kevin Nash recently calling Paul out on his schedule.
LA Knight Addresses SmackDown Botches
While Knight was able to retain against Andrade, one spot in the corner didn’t go smoothly for the reigning U.S. Champion. Knight attempted to leap to the top rope multiple times to hit his signature top rope superplex on Andrade, only to repeatedly slip before hitting the move.
Speaking after the show, Paul acknowledged this error and chalked it up to things never being guaranteed to work when you compete on live TV.
“It’s a game of inches, you can say it’s a game of chances, you can damn sure say you’re playing roulette out there. Things almost didn’t go my way.”
While Andrade will resume his feud with Carmelo Hayes on next week’s SmackDown, the future remains bright for LA Knight. Stay tuned to SEScoops for the latest on WWE’s megastar and his future as the reigning United States Champion.
