Called up to the main WWE roster in May, LA Knight was rechristened Max Dupri and would debut his Maximum Male Models group. The role saw Dupri restricted to being a manager for the duo of Ma.çé and Mån.sôör, despite his gifted work in the ring.
Only five months later, Max Dupri is back to being LA Knight, having ditched managing his own modeling agency to focus again on calling out dummies. The change appeared sudden and was visibly a Triple H-enforced decision, seeing as one of Vince McMahon’s last executive decisions before retiring from WWE was Max’s brief dismissal from MMM.
Jim Cornette Praises WWE For Letting LA Knight Be Himself
The return of the LA Knight persona brought glee back to fans of him, as it was evident this persona was merely the real-life Shaun Ricker with the volume turned up. Discussing the reverted character direction on the latest Jim Cornette Experience podcast, Cornette sent heavy praise WWE’s way for “correcting mistakes”:
“They’re correcting mistakes, and the thing about LA Knight is, I like the fact that they’ve realized that they committed a crime against nature. Changing his name to Max Dupri, the whole [Maximum] Male Models thing, the Ma.çé and Mån.sôör – and by the way, those guys have to be so embarrassed. They’re going out on TV looking like that doing that sh*t. I bet you they don’t leave the house when they’re home, they’re afraid their neighbors will see ’em.”
Continuing, Jim Cornette claimed that WWE should have had a storyline explanation for why LA Knight suddenly became Max Dupri for a short while, claiming it was the “worst idea anybody’s ever had”:
“I would have had to have given LA Knight some reason to impart to the people why he [did the Maximum Male Models thing] – obviously put it to bed, get over it, it’s the worst idea anybody’s ever had. But what was the reason that he went along with it for three weeks? There was no reason ever given as to why he did this stupid thing for four weeks or whatever.”
LA Knight returned to action on the October 14th Friday Night SmackDown as he defeated Mån.sôör in his first match since April 2nd’s NXT Stand & Deliver.