Why Did WWE Try to Book LA Knight as a Manager?

LA Knight has proven himself to be one of WWE’s hottest rising stars of 2023, generating bigger and bigger crowd reactions each week. That was on full display on this week’s Monday Night Raw when he arrived to proclaim he’ll win the upcoming Men’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match while effortlessly tearing down Logan Paul (who announced moments earlier he’d be in the match as well). But WWE officials (Vince McMahon) didn’t initially have faith in Knight as a wrestler when he first joined the main roster. Despite being a multiple-time champion in companies like Impact Wrestling and the NWA, WWE debuted him on Friday Night SmackDown as Max Dupri, a manager for the Maximum Male Models tag team of Mace and Mansoor. 

Knight reverted back to his old persona once Paul “Triple H” Levesque started booking WWE’s TV product and he has poked fun at the Dupri character in interviews ever since. He explained in a new interview with The Daily Mail that WWE was hesitant to push him as an in-ring competitor due to his age (he’s 40 and has 20 years of in-ring experience). 

“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 said.

“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,” he continued. 

In an interview with ComicBook leading up to his match with Bray Wyatt at the 2023 Royal Rumble, Knight explained why the Dupri character wasn’t clicking — “How honest do you want me to be (laughs)? I’ll just say this, at the end of the day I can make anything work. But at the end of the day, I’ve got a real tough time not being. I’ll tell you this, it wasn’t me. So when things came to pass and LA Knight started to shine through, it was the right place to go and not a moment too soon.”