After beginning as a heel in WWE NXT, LA Knight quickly became a fan favorite and rising star before being given a new gimmick by Vince McMahon upon his main roster debut this past May.
He made his main roster debut as Max Dupri, the manager for the Maximum Male Models faction, which included Mansoor and Mace.
When Triple H took over creative, he quickly made a change and brought back LA Knight. Knight discussed the change in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment.
“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.”
On SmackDown, LA Knight is currently feuding with Bray Wyatt. There was reportedly a pitch made for a “Pitch Black” match at the Royal Rumble. According to one company source, the match was pitched to feature Wyatt.
