When Karrion Kross made his WWE main roster debut on the July 19, 2021 episode of WWE Raw, he did so looking much different from his NXT persona.
Kross had an entirely new and different entrance gear, which included a warrior mask.
"I was really surprised because I wanted to get the most I could out of NXT and do my best work. I wasn’t by any means trying to phone anything in, but I was trying to demonstrate a type of work rate, ethic, and character IQ to go to main roster. I feel everybody is trying to do that. I tried to develop something that I thought would work on the absolute biggest stage while I was there," Kross recalled on Not Sam Wrestling with Sam Roberts.
He continued, "When we went up and it was dismantled, I had tons of people telling me different types of theories and reasons as to why it happened. None of them had to do with me. I just didn’t know what to do. I had this thing in the back of my head of, ‘they’ve given me a pro wrestler’s dream run in NXT. Now they are asking me to do this one thing that I think is absolutely stupid. I should probably just do it.’ In my head, I thought, ‘How ungrateful, how silly would it look, as a professional, to say no after I’ve been given so many unique opportunities?’ That was my mentality at the time. There was so much uncertainty and many weird things going on. I thought the outfit looked cartoony. I spoke to some people and they were like, ‘They’re considering doing Halloween costumes.’ That’s weird. Who wants to dress up as that? I thought, ‘Okay, they want to merchandise this. This is an opportunity for me to demonstrate, on a measurable metric, that I can draw a unique revenue for the company that maybe other wrestlers can’t.’ I tried to lean into it as much as I could. Even the writing team was like, ‘We need to get you out of this.’ I agree. They tried a lot of different things."
Despite being NXT Champion at the time, Kross was pinned in under two minutes by Jeff Hardy.
Kross' run on the main roster didn't last long as he was released by WWE in November 2021. He eventually returned to the company in August 2022.
Elsewhere during the interview, Kross revealed how Jon Moxley got him in contact with Triple H. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
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