In the summer of 2022, August 5th, 2022, to be exact, Karrion Kross and Scarlett made their triumphant return to WWE following a surprising return to the indies mere months removed from a dominant, 136-day reign as the NXT Champion.
Since that fateful day, the “Herald Of Doomsday” has wrestled 16 televised matches, going 7-9 in those contests, and has generally fallen out of serious contention for anything meaningful following his feud with Drew McIntyre last fall, with his current program with AJ Styles going nowhere fast just like his programs with Rey Mysterio and Madcap Moss before him.
And yet, for Karrion Kross, just being in WWE is a pretty incredible accomplishment, as, after growing up a massive fan of professional wrestling, joining The Fed is a childhood dream come true, as he explained to Bobby Fish on the Undisputed Podcast.
“From a performance standpoint, in-ring, what I always really liked a lot, growing up in a family of amateur wrestlers and boxing, was pro wrestling that kind of married the theatrics with stuff that really looks like legitimate combat sports,” Karrion Kross said via Fightful. “I was always involved in the practices and stuff like that, and when I got to see all of my superheroes in WWF/WWE on TV doing stuff like that, and then later on in my life ECW and All Japan etc, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool.’ Because I knew some of this stuff wouldn’t work, and then you see the things that do work, and that always looked more devastating to me. So when I began training as a wrestler, I wanted to utilize some of that stuff because it spoke to me, and I knew it would speak to other athletes and people with a legitimate background. That was just the way I wanted to perform.”
Fortunately for Kross, his second run on the WWE main roster has been far better than his first, as he hasn't had to wear any gladiator costumes or go to the ring without his partner in crime, Scarlett, but just because he's actually working regularly doesn't mean he's over in the process. No, despite having been given extensive chances to build his main roster character, fans haven't really connected with Kross in the way he may have hoped.
Karrion Kross explains the transition from working on the indies to WWE.
Elsewhere in his appearance on the Undisputed Podcast, Karrion Kross was asked about his character and how it has developed over the years from his initial run on the indies to his current shtick on the main roster. For Kross, establishing his “Killer” persona wasn't particularly difficult, as it seemingly fit perfectly into what indie promoters were looking for in main event talent.
“On the independents, I really kind of did this character in its most consistent rendition, sort of as a hitman-slash-serial killer, I was kind of somebody’s heater, whether it was for the promoter, the evil promoter, or if it was coming in and targeting people because the reality of it is, independent wrestling is independent wrestling,” Kross said. “It has a very short budget, it doesn’t have any sort of commercialized backing behind it, so I don’t rely on any sort of presentation whatsoever. All I needed was a little bit of live mic time. I was gonna produce my own promos to sell tickets, and when I got in the ring, I knew the audience and the demographic that I would perform for, they liked the same type of wrestling that I did.”
When Kross signed with WWE, he knew simply being a big tough dude wasn't going to cut it, so he leaned much more into becoming a larger-than-life character like the performers he looked up to growing up.
“When I went to WWE, I knew, with it being a story-based company, that coming in as a shoot fighter, wrestler type thing was not going to cut it. So I really began to lean in and embrace their process of creating a larger-than-life character type character/presentation. I had several conversations with Hunter about it to just explore what we could do with that,” Kross said.
“I wanted most importantly his feedback on my ideas because they’re the billionaires, I’m the guy wrestling on the indies. I said, ‘Hey, here are my concepts. If we put this on a world stage, what do you think about it?’ I just kind of kept my in-ring style, hoping to be able to appease both types of fans, fans that are looking for that, and then fans that are looking for the classic larger-than-life type of character. That was the whole reason behind it.”
Fortunately for Kross, the character he, Scarlett, and Triple H put together was a big enough hit to warrant being an NXT Champion during the Undisputed Era of NXT‘s Black and Gold prime. That character, however, hasn't been nearly as effective on the main roster, leading some fans to wonder if another tweak may be in order to get Kross where he wants to be in the future.
Follow Us
Subscribe