LA Knight Reveals Why WWE Gave Him The Max Dupri Gimmick

There’s no denying that LA Knight is one of the most popular wrestlers on the WWE roster right now, but last year he was working under drastically different circumstances. Knight joined the main roster as Max Dupri and he stopped wrestling as WWE put him in a new role as the manager for the Maximum Male Models stable.

Fans didn’t exactly embrace the Max Dupri character and it doesn’t sound like LA Knight was too thrilled about it either. Recently LA Knight spoke to Daily Mail about why WWE changed his gimmick when he got to the main roster and he revealed that age played a major factor in the decision.

“Oh, boy! Hahaha. I’m killing it in NXT. It’s crazy, like, just the reactions, the way I had turned from big time heel in the summertime to big time babyface by the winter. It’s not piped in and it’s not prefabbed reactions. It was organic, real stuff happening. I come up for a dark match, I get the attention of the right people; “hey, who is this guy?” but then the age thing comes up – [whispers] “oh no, he’s 40, danger’. But I’m not the average 40-year-old. I haven’t gone through the ringer. I haven’t had a bunch of surgeries or injuries, knock on that wood. I’ve lived a good, youthful life in a certain sense and I’ve taken care of myself in a way I would say most don’t.”

“And also, I look a certain way where obviously I’ve got somebody’s attention. But that number came up and it was like “well ok, maybe we make him a manager.” So Some things happened there. It was not my cup of tea and definitely I don’t think it was for me. But somehow, there I was. Some things happened that we don’t need to go into and then eventually LA Knight was back.”

LA Knight will compete in the men’s Money in the Bank ladder match next week at the Money in the Bank PLE. Knight seems to be the favorite to win, but we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out. Stay tuned for updates.