Karrion Kross on Developing His WWE Persona, the Inspirations for His Character

– During a recent chat with Bobby Fish on The Undisputed Podcast, WWE Superstar Karrion Kross discussed the inspirations for his in-ring personas. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):
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Karrion Kross on what brought him to his current persona: “From a performance standpoint, in-ring, what I always really liked a lot growing up in a family of amateur wrestlers and boxing was pro wrestling that kind of married the theatrics with stuff that really looks like legitimate combat sports. I was always involved with practices and stuff like that, and when I got to see all of my superheroes in WWE on TV doing stuff like that, and later on in my life ECW, AJPW, King’s Road, I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s so cool.”

On what he wanted to utilize: “I knew some of this stuff wouldn’t work, and then you see the things that do work, and that always looked more devastating to me. When I began training as a wrestler, I wanted to utilize some of that stuff because it spoke to me, and I knew it would speak to other athletes and people with a legitimate background. That was just the way I wanted to perform.”

On creating a larger than life character for WWE: “When I went to WWE I knew with it being a story-based company that coming in as a shoot fighter, wrestler type thing wasn’t going to cut it, so I really began to lean in and embrace their process of creating a larger-than-life type character.”

Kross on talks he had with Triple H about his character: “I had several conversations with Hunter about it to just explore what we could do with that. I wanted, most importantly, his feedback on my ideas because they’re the billionaires, I’m the guy wrestling on the Indies. I said, ‘Here are my concepts, if we put this on a world stage what do you think about it?’ I just kind of kept my ring style, hoping to be able to appease both types of fans. Fans that are looking for that and then fans that are looking for the classic larger-than-life type of character.”