LA Knight wasted no time in making an impact when he debuted during NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day on February 14th, 2021. He underwent a huge change after being called up to the main roster, as he was then known as Max Dupri. Vince McMahon also pulled him for a good reason.
Knight debuted as part of the Maximum Male Models agency, with ma.çé and mån.sôör being the first two acquisitions of the agency. As previously reported, Max Dupri was not on SmackDown this week.
In fact, he ended up being replaced by Sofia Cromwell, who made her debut on SmackDown last week as Maxxine Dupri, Max’s storyline sister. According to Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Vince McMahon pulled Dupri from WWE television after blaming him for a bad Maximum Male Model segment.
Max Dupri is out but the angle with Maximum Male Models is continuing using Sydney Zmrzel, who was Sofia Crawford in NXT, as Maxxine Dupri. Max being gone was a Vince call made after one of the early segments of the deal when Vince blamed the segment being bad on his delivery of the lines and apparently he also spoke up about some of the scripting. With Vince out, he may resurface if he has supporters with whoever ends up in charge but the idea was that he’s out of this angle. The segment was bad even though he actually has a great delivery.
Ringside News exclusively reported that Max Dupri was pulled from television, and one of those reasons was because he “lacked people skills.” We’ll have to see if a change in command sees Dupri make a television return.
WWE also removed the Maximum Male Model segment at the last minute. We’ll have to see if WWE will have anything else planned for Dupri, as his future seems dubious now.
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