After initially working as a heel in WWE NXT, LA Knight quickly became a fan favorite and was a rising star before being given a new gimmick he received upon his main roster arrival this past May by Vince McMahon.
He debuted under his new ring name of Max Dupri, a manager handling the Maximum Male Models faction that consisted of Mansoor and Mace.
Once Triple H took over creative, he quickly made a change and LA Knight was brought back. While doing an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Knight spoke about the change.
“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?’” Knight explained. “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. 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.”
LA Knight is currently involved in a feud with Bray Wyatt on Friday Night SmackDown. As exclusively reported by WrestlingNews.co, there was a pitch made for a “Pitch Black” match at the Royal Rumble. One source in the company believes that the match is for Wyatt.
