LA Knight has revealed he once came close to publicly blasting WWE Hall of Famer Mark Henry after taking issue with criticism directed at him during his first stint in NXT. Instead of hitting publish, however, Knight decided to scrap the response and focus on proving his critics wrong inside the ring.

The topic came up during the July 27 taping of Off The Ropes, where Henry reflected on being one of Knight's harshest critics before ultimately watching him rise to become one of WWE's biggest stars.

"It's no secret that I was very critical of this man," Henry admitted (via Fightful Select).

Henry explained that his criticism came from wanting talent to establish themselves on their own merits rather than leaning on comparisons or outside hype. He also praised the way Knight confronted him about those comments.

"I wanted to see people thrive on their own. All wrestlers, not just ones in particular but the one thing that I got out of L.A. Knight was a man. When I think of wrestlers that don’t communicate, this new modern era, you don’t find a lot of the younger wrestlers communicating but you did. You said, ‘Listen, I don’t agree with what you said’ and I went, ‘Well, great. Now we got something to talk about,’ and I always respected that," Henry said.

Looking back, Henry acknowledged that Knight completely changed his opinion.

"I told you that you were one of the few guys that I was hypercritical about early, that flipped the script and became a main event guy, and what was the thing, the trigger for you that when you were going through wrestling, learning how to do everything but trying everything that made you go, bam, nah, nah, this is who I am?" Henry added.

Knight then revealed just how frustrated he was after hearing Henry's remarks while trying to make his mark in NXT. Believing the comments could damage his opportunities in WWE, he even filmed an angry response.

"I remember I was in NXT the first time when I heard your criticisms. Boy oh boy was I pissed off, because I was like, ‘This man is trying to take food off my plate,’ and I was hot about it, and I had recorded an entire video just basically telling you everything about how big of a piece of sh*t I thought you were," Knight said.

Despite his anger, Knight ultimately decided posting the video would only amplify the criticism rather than help his career. Instead, he erased the recording and concentrated on letting his performances speak for themselves.

"But at the same time, I decided, you know what? I’m just gonna delete that video. Why do I need to give that attention? Let me just go and do my thing, and so that’s what I did is I continue to do that. Now whether that changed your opinion or helped that or whatever, didn’t make a difference to me," Knight said.

Knight also stressed that while he valued Henry's perspective given everything he had accomplished in the industry, he never felt the need to win over every critic.

"I respect everybody’s opinion. Obviously, you’ve done it before I did. You’ve gone and done all of this on such a high level at one of the greatest times in the history of the business. So I have to respect that. At the same time, I gotta know and trust in myself and what I’m doing," Knight said.

The former United States Champion also addressed Henry's original criticism that his promo style resembled The Rock, explaining that becoming a great talker had always been a major goal because the industry's biggest stars were often the strongest on the microphone.

"Your criticism originally was The Rock or whatever, and I get that plenty, and I understand why I get that because when I came up, my whole thing was, ‘I wanna be a great talker. The wrestling I wanna be good at as well. But the guys who were successful in this business, great talkers,'” Knight added.