Karrion Kross has always enjoyed a specific type of pro-wrestling.
The former two-time NXT Champion spoke about his journey to WWE during a recent interview on the Undisputed Podcast with host Bobby Fish. Kross begins by discussing the type of wrestling he enjoyed watching as a kid, which saw talent blend theatrics with legitimate fighting styles and techniques.
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. 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.
He then looked back at his time on the independents and how his character was basically just a hitman type, a character that worked perfectly with the shoot style moveset he would present. Kross adds that the indie fan base was really into his shoot style because it stood out from everyone else.
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. 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.
Finally, Kross mentions his move to WWE and how he knew that a “story-based company” would require him to create some larger than life theatrics.
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.
In a separate interview, Kross spoke about the Bloodline Civil War match from Money In The Bank and explains why he thought it was one of the best matches he has ever seen. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)