WWE star Karrion Kross was interviewed on the latest “INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet” podcast. Here are the highlights:
On Bray Wyatt:
“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 backstage. It was never about wrestling, but about horror movies or tattoos or music. Then, like, I wouldn’t see him like, we weren’t like friends, but he was very warm to me. I think it was around 2018 or 2019 he reached out to me and he was like, ‘We need to dance’, and I was like, ‘All right.’ I was blown away that 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 on 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.’ I always thought him and I were gonna do this in a different capacity.”
“Fast forward. I haven’t talked to anybody but my wife about this. So fast forward, we were supposed to work last WrestleMania (39). Nobody knew that except for a collection of writers and some people in the office. 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 ideas with 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. 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.”
Some of the wrestlers 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.”
Growing his hair out:
“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. I was supposed to do the film and we never finished it. There were a bunch of things that went wrong. We never got to it and I just decided to keep my hair.”
Returning to WWE:
“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 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 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, we were just like, this is exactly what they want to see. It’s what we want to do. It was a no-brainer.”
His book he is writing:
“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.”
