LA Knight Returning To WWE, No Longer Max Dupri
The return of LA Knight is coming soon to WWE after the former Max Dupri walked out on his Maximum Male Models group recently on Smackdown.
When Max Dupri arrived on WWE Smackdown in May, he looked familiar to the audience because he used to be known as LA Knight in NXT. Prior to that, the gifted talker was known as former Impact Wrestling World Champion Eli Drake.
Over the last month on WWE Smackdown, Max Dupri has grown increasingly frustrated while dealing with the Maximum Male Models group of Mace & Mansoor, who also have his “sister” Maxxine Dupri with them on camera.
On the September 16th episode of Smackdown in Anaheim, Dupri noted they were near LA, then he did a long pause and Maxxine told him to get on with it. That was clearly a tease for LA Knight. After the guys lost a tag team match on the September 23rd Smackdown, Dupri yelled at the Models for taking photos and not concentrating on the match. On the September 30th edition of Smackdown, Max walked away from the team when they were posing backstage.
In an update on the Max Dupri situation, PWInsider’s Mike Johnson has confirmed that the character known as LA Knight will be back as soon as possible. The report noted that he is already listed as LA Knight on WWE’s internal roster, so that’s what he will be known as going forward.
Meanwhile, the Maximum Male Models group consisting of Mace and Mansoor is expected to continue with Maxxine Dupri according to the PWInsder report.
The character of Max Dupri (along with the Maximum Male Models group) was created when Vince McMahon was running WWE’s creative team. Since Vince retired from WWE on July 22nd, Triple H took over running WWE creative on the main roster, so it’s not a surprise that LA Knight will return since he had a lot of success in NXT with Triple H running that show.
During his NXT career, Knight had some notable feuds with Cameron Grimes and Grayson Waller before being moved to the main roster as Max Dupri.
The soon-to-be-renamed LA Knight will turn 40 years old on November 1st and it appears as though the wrestling veteran will finally get his chance to show what he can do on the WWE main roster. Yeah!