In December 2023, vignettes aired featuring Karrion Kross and Scarlett that teased a new group in their next chapter.
In January, The Authors of Pain (Akam & Rezar) and Paul Ellering returned to WWE, forming The Final Testament with Kross.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Kross revealed how the group came together.
"For quite some time, I had several people in creative tell me there was an idea being entertained of me leading a group. They had a bunch of people they were interested in putting together with us. I had a certain set of people I was interested in bringing in. Maybe at this time, I don’t say who, but one day I will say who. I don’t want it to be taken the wrong way and those people wind up getting disappointed. Someone had mentioned to me that AOP was on the roster with Paul Ellering. I was like, ‘Wait, what? Since when?’ Apparently, they had been there for a while and were looking for the right time to bring them into the fold. I said, ‘Okay, we can try that, for sure.’ We meet at the Performance Center and start shooting these cryptic vignettes. It was almost like Iron Man 3 with The Mandarin when he had the TVs behind him, Ben Kingsley, ‘They’ll never see me coming.’ These propaganda videos. It was really cool. I loved the set up. Initially, it was supposed to be, the direction we were going in was sort of a militia-cult group. I’ve always been one to try to stay away from reoccurring archetypes. There is nothing wrong with reoccurring archetypes in professional wrestling, films, and movies, they are what they are. I wanted to present something new to people, something fun, with nostalgia callbacks. That’s how it started. We’ve gone in different directions.
"At one point, they were like, ‘We kind of want you to be a mixed martial arts group.’ I was like, ‘That’s not a good idea.’ When you think about the times we’re being given to work, a mixed martial arts type of wrestler would be good in a 20-30 minute format because you have time to get into the holds. When you put people in holds and you’re doing submissions, it’s a lot of flat time. If the show is moving quickly and you keep the action going, what am I going to do? Put on a kneebar for three seconds? All of us can do that stuff, but we thought leaning more into the character direction rather than that would be a better thing to do. I wish we had 20-30 minutes. I would have walked out to Ken Shamrock’s theme."
AOP are set to face The New Day (Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods) on Monday's WWE Raw.
Elsewhere during the interview, Kross commented on his promos. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
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