LA Knight Addresses Dropping Max Dupri WWE Gimmick

When LA Knight was brought to WWE's main roster there was a lot of excitement about what he could offer due to how popular he had been in "WWE NXT." However, creative had other plans for him and he became Max Dupri, a manager of a modeling agency. Dupri brought Mace and Mansoor together, with Maxxine Dupri soon following to round out the faction. 

The gimmick was criticized by fans, and it didn't take long for Knight to leave the group and go back to his previous character. This was similar to what Karrion Kross experienced during his initial main roster run, as the gimmick was the opposite of what fans wanted. In an interview with Yahoo, Knight addressed his character change.

"There was an NXT built-in audience that knew who LA Knight was," he said. "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 is confident he "will make any [character] work, but when it comes down to it, there was one that was way more 'me' than the other one," which fans are seeing now as he feuds against Bray Wyatt.