INSANE Reason WWE Made LA Knight A Manager
WWE's reason for turning LA Knight into Max Dupri is frankly ludicrous.
One of the hottest wrestlers in WWE at the moment he might be, but LA Knight's rise to the top was preceded by concerns that he was too old to cut it as an in-ring talent.
Knight, 40, confirmed as much in a new interview with Alex McCarthy of the Daily Mail. The Money in the Bank 2023 contender revealed that Vince McMahon had pigeonholed him as a manager, launching his main roster career as Max Dupri in Maximum Male Models, on account of his age. This changed during Paul 'Triple H' Levesque's creative reign, with Knight returning to his previous gimmick after talks with the Chief Content Officer.
Said Knight of his crowd reactions vs. WWE's own reaction to him:-
"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."
Continuing, the former Eli Drake admitted his role as Max Dupri wasn't to his liking:-
"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."
Knight then confirmed his conversation with Triple H, praising Levesque for his trust in him:-
"Yeah, I was kinda pushing for it but didn’t know if it was really a possibility at that point because we just established this thing to this larger audience. The NXT audience is what it is, just under a million or whatever, and now you’re looking at over two million for Smackdown. So there’s a bunch of people who had never even seen LA Knight before and they’d only seen this other thing. So now, can we just change gears? So now, I think it’s a testament to his trust and a testament to my abilities to be able to turn that corner in such short order and have people not even barely remember there was another."
WWE raised many an eyebrow upon bringing Knight up to the main roster as Max Dupri in May 2022, casting him in the managerial role. This ultimately changed in September, however, when Dupri turned on partners ma.çé and mån.sôör, leaving Maximum Male Models, and going back to the LA Knight character.
The 40-year-old is currently one of WWE's most popular figures, commanding some of the promotion's loudest crowd reactions whenever he appears onscreen. Knight remains a heavy betting favourite to win this year's men's Money in the Bank ladder match, too.