LA Knight achieved success in WWE NXT, but when he was promoted to the main roster in 2022, he was transformed into a manager as Max Dupri, where he was the Maximum Male Model’s talent agent.
Following Vince McMahon’s resignation, Triple H took over main roster creative and reverted to the Knight gimmick.
During an interview with the Daily Mail, Knight stated that there was an internal concern about his age, which is why he was promoted to manager. After working a dark match, he drew the attention of WWE officials.
“I come up for a dark match, I get the attention of the right people; “hey, who is this guy?” but then the age thing comes up – [whispers] “oh no, he’s 40, danger’. But I’m not the average 40-year-old. I haven’t gone through the ringer. I haven’t had a bunch of surgeries or injuries, knock on that wood. I’ve lived a good, youthful life in a certain sense and I’ve taken care of myself in a way I would say most don’t.”
Knight continued, “And also, I look a certain way where obviously I’ve got somebody’s attention. But that number came up and it was like “well ok, maybe we make him a manager.” So some things happened there. It was not my cup of tea and definitely I don’t think it was for me. But somehow, there I was. Some things happened that we don’t need to go into and then eventually LA Knight was back.”
Knight stated that he wanted to return to the Knight gimmick but wasn’t sure if it was a real possibility because he only portrayed it in NXT. He volunteered for the role because of his ability to switch characters and make people forget about the Max Dupri character.
