LA Knight Says His First Months On WWE’s Main Roster Were Mental Torture

LA Knight says there was a point early in his WWE main roster run when he genuinely thought everything he had worked for was about to disappear.

He first arrived on the main roster in 2022 after a successful NXT run, but instead of debuting as himself, he was introduced as Max Dupri, the mouthpiece for Maximum Male Models.

Speaking at Fanatics Fest, Knight looked back on his stint as Max Dupri, admitting it was one of the hardest times of his career. After years of building the LA name in NXT and elsewhere, he suddenly found himself playing a completely different role on the main roster. (via Wrestling Inc)

“The level of torture, mentally, that that was for those few months where it’s like, all right, I did this thing that brought me to the dance, undeniably. And now you want me to just tuck it away over here? That makes sense, sure, yeah, we’ll do that [said sarcastically]. Oh, wait, you’re going to pay me how much? All right, I’ll think about it. But at the same time, I’m still sitting there thinking, this is career suicide. This is torpedoing me, and I’m dead in the water at this point,” he said.

Fortunately for Knight, that chapter didn’t last long. He left Maximum Male Models and eventually got reintroduced as LA Knight. Fans quickly got behind him, with the now-familiar “LA Knight, yeah!” chants becoming one of the loudest crowd responses on WWE television.

“But at some point when the opportunity arose, [and I told myself] wait a minute, I can go back, and I can do me, my way? Let’s do that. And that’s what we did. And every single person standing out here right now, they’re standing here because of the fact that I got that opportunity to do that. That chance to come out and do what I do my way with everybody saying [crowd chants ‘LA Knight, yeah.’].”

That momentum eventually helped turn him into one of the company’s biggest stars and led to a United States Championship reign.