NXT superstar Karrion Kross spoke with Pro Wrestling Sheet to talk about his WWE debut, his Takeover match with Ciampa, how he thinks fans would receive him, and his goal to dethrone Keith Lee of both is belts. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
How he feels about WWE having faith in him and moving into the main even scene:
It feels very good. More so how Scarlett and I have been received by fans. That’s first and foremost the most important thing to me. Because, as you know, depending on how things are booked, you can be put into different types of situations and can be plugged into the top of the food chain, so to speak. If fans reject that, then it’s all for nothing. So, more than anything, the way I’ve been received by the WWE Universe has been awesome.
Whether he thinks he would be getting cheered or booed by fans at Full Sail:
I think it would be a little bit of both. We have to scale villainous here. I mean, a couple of times I’ve come up behind people and I’ve dive bombed them on the floor for absolutely no reason. That’s gotta count for something!
On Tommaso Ciampa being a test for him:
Actually, to be quite honest with you, it didn’t occur to me at the time. But perhaps he’s right. It may have been. I think I get so tunnel-visioned on the task at hand. I deliberately developed a very militant state of mind on when there is something to be done, to put all my energy in that direction.
On if he was happy with his match with Ciampa at Takeover: In Your House:
Very! Very very very. It was everything that I wanted it to be. From a selfish standpoint, if I can say that. It was everything I wanted it to be in terms of the back and forth, the violence and just the vibe. I feel like Tommaso and I really accomplished a big fight feel. And that’s really what I’m always going after. I’m going after that. I want people to feel like they’re about to watch something go off that is going to feel different from everything else that they are going to watch on the show and I want them to be pumped about it on the way there. I’m always aiming for that. Always.
Debuting without fans:
Again … when it was happening, I was just so pumped to be there. And I know that she was too. Scarlett I think for ten years has been trying to get to WWE. For me it was six. Just being there, we were on cloud nine. And having the opportunity to contribute, I mean … it’s awesome.We looked at it without the fans as a situation where it’s like, her and I like to be challenged with our work. Because it’s all the better when you have a challenging situation and knock it out of the park. You really feel like you’ve accomplished something. And then when people enjoy it too, that’s like everything. That’s what we’re all about is trying to power through difficult situations to create something awesome for people to enjoy. So that was, in a weird way, kind of the perfect situation. You know what we do is we feed off of the crowd. That’s why they’re there. We didn’t have that. So we trained extra hard. We had our minds right for it. We just went in there laser focused on these are the things that are not here and there’s nothing that we can do about them, we’re gonna subtract that from the equation. This is what we DO have, and we’re gonna focus on this and get the absolute most out of it. We’re gonna kill this. That was kind of our mindset for that situation. We wanted to give it to the fans. We knew that there were millions of people all over the world that would see that and we just tried to focus on that to give them the best version of ourselves at that time.
Says he’s coming after both of Keith Lee’s titles:
I got big pants … and I don’t think one belt is enough. I think I’m gonna need two to be able to walk around comfortably. That’s just where I’m at currently with it right now. I’m gonna need two belts, I think.