LA Knight Addresses Scrapping Max Dupri Gimmick
LA Knight wasn't 'Max Dupri' for long...
Dec 16, 2022
WWE star LA Knight has opened up on his brief time as Max Dupri on the main roster.
Knight was called up from NXT as the manager of the Maximum Male Models agency, before reverting back to LA Knight once Vince McMahon retired and Paul 'Triple H' Levesque took over WWE creative.
Speaking about the decision to scrap the Dupri gimmick during an interview with Yahoo, Knight said:
"There was an NXT built-in audience that knew who LA Knight was. So now here comes this other character being introduced, and so for those people, it was like, 'Wait, what is this?'. But when you look at the numbers of a 'SmackDown' audience, for a large swath of those people, they are seeing me for the first time. So I could've been Joe Shmoe for all it matters. In a strange sense, that would have actually worked just because three quarters of that audience is seeing me for the first time regardless of who I am. At the same time though, I think there is a matter of the shoe fitting and not".
Knight added "I will make any [character] work, but when it comes down to it, there was one that was way more 'me' than the other one".
In the summer, it was reported that Knight (as Dupri) was pulled from SmackDown at the last minute after 'ruffling some feathers' by questioning the script.