Chris Hero looks back on his time in WWE NXT.
Hero, who worked in WWE as Kassius Ohno, appeared on the It List Podcast to discuss his time in NXT after returning to the brand in 2017. He reveals that his comeback segment, which featured Bobby Roode, had to be filmed multiple times.
I remember when I came back to NXT in 2017, I came out to do this angle with this guy Bobby Roode and then we did it and we came to the back and they go, ‘No, no, no. We want you to go do it again. Do this.’ So we went out and we did it again and we came back and they go, ‘No. We still want you to go and do this.’ So I remember running out there for the third time and looking at the people and I was just like, I don’t know… And you have to act like it’s for the first time, whatever and it feels weird and is weird, but there are production ways to go around this and make it look like it’s brand-new for the first time and it’s whatever.
Shifting subjects, Hero recalled a matchup he had with Adam Cole in NXT and how a spot near the steel steps left him with what he calls “jelly knee.”
I had one of those on my knee at some point in 2002 all the way through 2003 because we wear kneepads and we sweat and it’s like, it would heal… I called it a ‘juicy knee’. It burned like hell. It’s just a surface wound but man, it sucked. I was trying to do a fancy spear and I jumped off the second rope and went running and I tripped and buried my knee in the mat and my knee pads had kind of slid down so I just crushed my knee. Now, I feel — and I guess you can’t really see it but I have jelly knee from a match in (2018). It’s a jelly knee and I was wrestling this guy named Adam Cole who is in AEW currently. Had a very fun match, he’s one of my favorite people I’ve ever wrestled and he pushed me into the ring steps from behind and because of my height, just the top of my knee just crushed into the steel steps and it was indented and then eventually, it came back but now it’s just jelly knee. It’s gelatinous.
Hero is currently working a trial run with AEW in a backstage role. He has not wrestled since his WWE release in 2020.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)