When she's not training with Natalya at The Dungeon 2.0, Maxxine Dupri is continuing to learn from her Alpha Academy stablemates, Otis and Akira Tozawa. As she attests on "Casual Conversations with The Classic," her former cohort Chad Gable remains a strong source of her wrestling knowledge as well.
"[Chad] is someone whose advice I really take to heart until he went off the deep end," Dupri said. "Prior to that, he wasn't a big yapper. He was only telling me the things that were important for me to fix for my success. I feel that during that time I learned so much from him about the business, about the moments that matter, about how to make those moments matter."
"Another person who is a man of few words, but who always gives me advice only when needed is [Akia] Tozawa. Tozawa is an insanely talented wrestler for starters, and he'll watch my matches. He'll only tell me things that like, 'Hey, next time, try this.' I'll do it and I'm like, 'My god, that was so much easier. Why have I not been doing that this whole time?' But he has all these little tricks up his sleeve, and it is those little things that perfect those movements."
With Alpha Academy (minus Gable) backing her, Dupri's stock in WWE has rapidly increased, so much so that she dethroned Becky Lynch for the Women's Intercontinental Championship in Madison Square Garden in November. From there, Dupri showed off her sharpened technical skills in a successful title defense against Ivy Nile on "WWE Raw" before meeting Lynch in a rematch on January 5. Dupri's improvement was evident yet again in this bout, but due to illegal rope leverage, Lynch regained the title. Dupri's WWE career began in 2021 after a successful tryout during that year's SummerSlam week.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Casual Conversations with The Classic" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
