-- Instinct Culture by Denise Salcedo interviewed WWE Superstar Karrion Kross about his upcoming match with Finn Bálor for the NXT Championship taking place on night two of NXT Takeover: Stand & Deliver. Below are some key highlights and quotes from the interview.
Karrion Kross On Having To Relinquish The NXT Championship Due to His Shoulder Injury
The injury itself and being taken completely off course was absolutely devastating as you could imagine. It's my life's work. The perception is that I was in NXT for a short period of time and found all this success. But people don't take into consideration that it's been many many many years that I put into this craft in order to get that one night. NXT Takeover 30 at the time, to get in the ring, and compete for that belt, I put everything into that moment so to have that all derailed so randomly in a freak accident it was brutal but like anything in life when you're dealing with a very serious traumatic situation you gotta pick yourself up, dust yourself off and say 'where can I find the silver lining in this situation?' And I did that, and I rehabbed and recovered way before they thought I was gonna get back which I was very happy about. We're back on track and we're gonna stay after it now.
Karrion Kross On What Motivates Him To Become NXT Champion
I think the biggest motivating thing for me obviously is to kinda get back the full momentum that I had coming in before the injury. I had a vision that I was dead set on manifesting into NXT and we lost that. We lost this perfect vision, this thing that I was gonna create for everyone to see. This is an opportunity now to get that back. And to bring something new to life that no one has seen before. Karrion Kross as an NXT Champion defending, people have no idea what they are in for, it's going to be awesome. Obviously I gotta take this guy down {Finn Bálor } in order to do that. I am feeling very confident especially after last week. I am pretty certain I can do it.
Karrion Kross Discusses The Importance of the WWE Produced Covid Vaccination PSA
I think it's important to educate people about as many options as possible, about improving your health. This is where we're at, we all need to be able to have these options and I think we all wanna get back to normal. It's very important.... I am very happy that we are progressing, when you think about where we were a year ago nationally/globally, we've made major steps forward. Where we are at today is so much better than we were last year, I am very happy about it.
Karrion Kross Says He's Only Ever Been Starstruck By Ric Flair
I am going to say Ric Flair. And I'll tell you, I was a bodyguard for a very long time and I was working around celebrities in the nightclub industry many moons ago before I had anything to do with wrestling. I was around celebrities all the time, I was around professional athletes all the time, I grew up with a wrestling/ boxing family culture and we were in gyms, I never got starstruck by anybody. I was 16 years old, I met him in New York. He was at an autograph signing; something about making eye contact with Ric Flair and it was totally unexpected, I was like "I am gonna meet Ric Flair!" run up & boom I froze. And I was like starstruck is real. I couldn't even talk. {laughs} I couldn't believe it. And he just looked at me like he's seen this a million times and he says, "How you doing kid?" {laughs}
