Before there was LA Knight on the main roster in WWE, there was Max Dupri, the manager of Maximum Male Models. Knight was only a manager at the time, something he never quite looked comfortable doing alongside the models, Mace and Mansoor. Knight explained to Chris Van Vliet on an episode of "Insight" that the Max Dupri character was pitched much differently to him, in a way he didn't initially mind."The bill of goods that was sold to me there was that I was going to be kind of a Roddy Piper in the sense of when Roddy first came in, he was a manager, a mouthpiece, who sometimes wrestled and then eventually just became a full-time wrestler," Knight explained. "That was kind of how it was painted to me. There were some other details in there that made me think, 'This could be okay.' Then it started going in directions where I was like, 'This is going to be awful. This is going to be pigeon-holed. We're stuck. We're never going to get above a certain trajectory.'"Knight said that he was in a terrible mood coming to work every week as the gimmick continued to unfold on television, first with backstage segments alongside General Manager Adam Pearce. He bluntly said that he felt like WWE, and then-chairman Vince McMahon, were killing his career, as Maximum Male Models was McMahon's "baby." McMahon would even come to rehearsals for the model gimmick, something Knight was told he rarely ever did at that point in 2022.
The boisterous Knight explained that McMahon wanted the Dupri character to talk very softly, and said that he highly doubted the chairman knew anything about him as Knight. He spoke about one moment during rehearsals where McMahon urged him to talk even more softly in front of a live crowd."He goes, 'Just read me a line from there as softly as you can.... Try to be [feminine] without being a [feminine,]'" Knight explained. "So then, I go to start reading a line, I'm looking for a line, but as I'm doing that, he keeps talking to me... Then he stops and he goes, 'What are you doing? I need you to pay attention. It's important you pay attention. Always pay attention.' I'm thinking to myself, 'You asked me to read a f****** line.'"After yet another segment in front of the crowd, Knight was still told he needed to be quieter. He recounted coming back the next week and Pearce asking if anyone had gotten with him that day. Knight said he blew up on Pearce and the writer he was working with."He's like, 'Well, Vince said that he didn't feel like you were listening last week,'" Knight said. "'He said if you can't be softer and you're not going to listen, he's going to find another Maxx Dupri.' I went, 'Well you tell him to find another f****** Maxx Dupri.'"He said after that, he found out he had been taken off the road, the same week the Wall Street Journal story about McMahon's hush money payments broke and Triple H became head of creative. Knight said that it all very well may have saved his job.If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
