Maxxine Dupri has one hell of a story.
When she was fast tracked to the WWE main roster, there was little belief she would be anything more than a gimmick character, an enhancement for what was then a Maximum
Male Models stable led by Max Dupri before good sense prevailed and Max returned to his LA Knight form. That left Maxxine in the lurch but she soldiered on, joining up with Alpha Academy and mostly working as comedy relief alongside that crew.
She’s been there ever since, but she’s no longer a side character. Instead, she’s been expanding her training and it’s paid off in the form of actually challenging for titles in storylines with the likes of all time greats like Becky Lynch. She told Chris Van Vliet on his “Insight” show that the aforementioned expansion has brought her here (via Wrestling Observer):
“I really do feel like it shifted when I expanded my training. Everyone on [the] main roster, a lot of them have wrestled on the indies or they’ve all trained at different places. So everyone does things differently. So I think getting to learn from different people and, like, taking it all in allows you to be well-rounded.
“So I think that’s what I needed. I needed to learn from different people, different coaches, be in the Dungeon, be at Flatbacks, be at the Performance Center, do NXT live events with girls I’ve never worked with before, that I’ve never locked up with. And really just start, like, figuring out all those in-betweens.
“Because I think it’s the little things that helped me level up more than just like — I know watching from the outside, it seems like, ‘Oh wow, okay, a new move. She’s leveled up.’ But I think for the actual performance, it’s all those little in-betweens that I really am still fine tuning, but really needed to work on.”
She’s improved by leaps and bounds, and at just 28-years-old the sky appears to be the limit.
