Karrion Kross (@realKILLERkross) is a professional wrestler signed to WWE and also known for his time in IMPACT Wrestling, MLW and Lucha Underground. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Hollywood, CA to talk about returning to WWE, his relationship with Triple H, his hilarious Jesse Ventura impression, how the Govenor himself tweeted that he liked Karrion’s impression over Will Sasso’s, his wife Scarlett Bordeaux, the book he wrote about his life and when it might be published, his love of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and much more!
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Quote I’m thinking about:If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. – Martin Luther King, Jr
On Bray Wyatt:
“I didn’t want to get too much into it until we were here. It’s not a double-talk conversation. But so Windham and I were talking on and off for like, a long time when I was an extra in WWE, he would always talk with me like backstage. It was never about wrestling, but about like horror movies or tattoos or music. And then, like, I wouldn’t see him like, we weren’t like friends but he was very warm to me. And I think it was around 2018 2019 he reached out to me and he was like, we need to dance. And I was like, all right, I was blown away. Somebody that I look up to as a performer talking to me, like, indie Killer Kross who hasn’t made a name yet or drawn any money. As we got close to that time, I went to getting on board with NXT. We do the entrance. suplex Leon Ruff on his head a couple of times choke him. And he reaches out again. He was like, it’s gonna be me and you at WrestleMania one day. And I was like, my God. I always thought like, I just always thought him and I were gonna do this in a different capacity, you know?”
On potential plans for a match with Bray Wyatt:
“So we fast forward. I haven’t talked to like anybody but my wife about this. So fast forward we were supposed to work last WrestleMania nobody knew that except for a collection of writers and some people in the office. [Was this WrestleMania 39?] Yeah. We were slated to do something. And we would talk for hours about how we wanted to get into it, what we wanted to deliver creatively for people where we thought we both needed to be. We had you know, ideas with like Alexa and Bo and Scarlett. You know, and then everything happened the way it did. But he left a mark on anybody and everybody that he ever met. And it’s just very strange the way everything kind of just played out, like, beautiful and tragic. And he was always an inspiration to me and always showed me warmth. He showed everybody warmth, you know what I mean? But I just have so many, I have more stories than we have time to share. But we were cool and I’ll never forget him.”
On multiple people getting Bray Wyatt tattoos:
“I was just approached in the middle of the day by a lot of the staff, they had let us know that there was a local artist in town. We’re all upset, you know, it’s still unsettling for a lot of us, what happened. So we just decided to collectively all do it. You know, it was something we all wanted to do together and that’s kind of how it came about. It was very spontaneous, but it was a no-brainer.”
On growing his hair out:
“Eventually, it’s going to grow so long that it’s going to take over the earth. That’s the plan. That’s pretty long. I think I want to grow my hair, maybe to like Taker 98 length. I always thought that was a really cool period in his career. And that whole vibe, that whole look was awesome. And yeah, I was telling you initially I was supposed to do the film, it got like, we never finished it never held off like a bunch of things that went wrong. We never got to it. I just decided to keep my hair.”
On returning to WWE:
“When Hunter reached out to Scarlett and I and basically just asked us, Do you guys want to come home? We’re like, absolutely. So he had just said to us, I would like to kind of reprise, you know, what we had created in NXT and translate that to the main roster. And so without needing to have much more of a conversation beyond that, because we had worked together, he doesn’t have to over-explain himself, I get the idea and the vision. So did she. We were like, well, let’s, let’s give the audience what they wanted that they never got when we came up. Like I can’t even, it was inescapable. When I was released, everywhere her and I went, fans were saying we just wanted to see you guys together and get that murder run on the main roster that you had on NXT, we wanted to see that translate. They wanted to see the guy, you know, come out of the ground and start fighting people on the mountain of the main rosters. It’s like, that whole thing. And we were just like, this is exactly what they want to see. It’s what we want to do, it was a no-brainer.”
On the Karrion Kross entrance:
“So Hunter asked us what sort of musical vibe and direction we wanted to go in. And I had mentioned something heavy, melodic. If we could find some sort of chorus or riff that was something haunting. He sent, I guess those details over to the music department. They develop the music and he sent it to us and we had some ideas about how long it would take walking from the curtain to the ring and how much time we’d have in the ring before the bell rang. So we came up with some choreography in our apartment at that time. And so when we got to work like Hunter, I already had like, the idea for the mood with the lights. And he had put the bird up on the Tron, which was a play off Karrion. He, I don’t know, just all the conversations that the three of us had. We were all so on point. It was crazy. It was like, didn’t have to over-explain anything. Like we all just kind of had a good working chemistry. So he had that whole thing set up for us when we got there.”
On possibly facing John Cena:
“I can’t say it’s not. I can’t say it’s not impossible. So during the lockdowns, fans were fantasy booking tonnes of stuff. They started fantasy booking me versus John Cena. That blew my mind. I was still in NXT. I was expecting maybe ideas and concepts like that would come at a later time one day when I’m on main roster, they were already saying they wanted to see that. Then I think one day John posted a picture of me on his Instagram with no caption, no context, and people went crazy over it. You know, unfortunately, some things happened from that point to where we are now where I was no longer with the company. And now I’m back and he’s here as well. Just thought I’d put it out there and see if people still felt about it.”
On calling out Batista in 2019:
“So it’s crazy how it can either happen immediately, or it can happen over time how people will attach like a crazy context to something that might not totally be accurate. So like when I called Dave out. My intention was, first of all, he was in the hotel, we were wrestling and it was a GCW event. He was filming a zombie film. Someone told me right before I walked through the curtain that Batista was here, and I was like, I want to meet him. They’re like, No, no, not here, he’s in the building. I went, Where? Oh, he’s in the building filming a movie, of course, he’s filming a movie. And at that time, I was bummed to hear that he retired, I was a huge fan of his growing up. And just even being at the, you know, the smaller level that I was at the time. I love that. Like, I still love this. It’s hard for me to imagine not being in love with this anymore to the point where I would be comfortable and okay to retire. So I was thinking in that context at the time, like, there’s no way he doesn’t love this anymore. Maybe he just needs something creative that he would be really interested in. Because that’s all of us. You can hook us back into wrestling when we’re retired. If there’s something you’re genuinely interested to do creatively, and Dave has like a shoot background. He’s like a legit brown belt in jujitsu. Yeah, so I go out there and I do the match with Nick Gage, choke him, get up. And yeah, call Batista out with the intention hoping that if he really didn’t want to be retired, and he wanted to do something that he’s never done before that would be in his wheelhouse that people have never seen him do which would be like the shoot work stuff, I would have been happy.”
Did Batista respond?
“I doubt it, but Josh knows him. Maybe Josh may have told him but it was never in, in a way where it was like, you know, screw Dave Batista. No. Like you heard the reaction from people they really right away were like, it would be awesome to have Dave Batista on Bloodsport, it would be awesome. And like for people to see him move, legit. You know what I mean on the ground and free roll and flow with people that I think it would have been awesome.”
On being set up for Roman Reigns:
“I mean, so I landed, this is just my opinion, my opinion. I landed into a very interesting time in the programming. So if you notice, we’ve got three very strong heels with three titles for quite a while. Theory, GUNTHER, Roman, right. These guys all had very long title runs. Functionally, from a programming standpoint, these are the top dogs, right? Babyfaces gotta go up to the PLEs to fight the heels. You know, I kind of look at it and think about it like when I go back, and I watch NXT when I was a heel champion, I was the most dominant heel champion, I was the most dominant heel in the programme because I was champion. When you’re the heel, and you’ve got the belt. A lot of the programming of the show should go in that direction. Like if I’m writing and formatting a wrestling television show, that’s how I’m going to format it. So you know, a lot of the time really does need to go to the people who have the belts. And that’s like anyone, not just them, those three specifically, but anyone who has a belt. That’s the whole purpose of that. If like you were to compare, you know, Game of Thrones, everyone is trying to get the throne in there are subplots, but they’re not taking up a massive portion of the show, the show should be about trying to get the throne just like in wrestling, the show should be about trying to get the belts, but he gets some babyfaces around those belts.”
On writing a book:
“So I submitted the book to WWE because I would like to have it published through them. Everything that I do, I would like to do through WWE, I want to be a lifer, you know what I mean? I would like to think that it could be published by the end of this year. The book is being reviewed or has been reviewed. There are just a couple other moving parts that need to be set in place for it to be published. But when I submitted the book, I had the formatting down. It was edited, there’s photos in it, and I gave them like a totally finished product. So it’s whenever they have all of their ducks in a row for some things that they’re trying to line up for all of us. On the publishing side, the book will be published, but I’m really excited for people to read it. Again, I’m a little bit scared. But I think that’s probably a good thing.”
What is Karrion Kross grateful for:
“My health, the health of my family and to be able to do what I love for a living.”
