Appearing on the Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette podcast, Killer Kross talked about an encounter he had with Jon Moxley and how their match came to happen after Moxley had just left WWE.
Kross recalled how he had the idea of facing the former Dean Ambrose: “Jon leaves WWE, I think to myself, ‘I’m starving on the indies. And I just want to work with people that are better than me. I want to be in the ring with people who have done this at the highest level.’ And all of sudden, he’s independent. I’m looking on the internet and I’m like, ‘no one’s attempting to create some sort of feud or reach out to him to see if he’s willing to work. No one’s trying to sell tickets with him.’ I’m like, ‘are you guys insane?’ So I basically put this promo together, it was like a short vignette trying to test the waters to see if he’d be interested and to see if it would work. Not knowing him but having mutual friends, I didn’t want to call and ask him for his number. I’m not that guy. I was like, ‘I’m just going to put something out there and see if people want to see this.’ Sure enough, there was an interest.”
“Jon randomly texts me and he’s like, ‘hey, what’s going on?’ We start talking. I’m like, ‘I’m running a show in Las Vegas, Natural Born Killers.’ It was like a mix between UWFI Japan, a little bit like Bloodsport. I was trying to create an environment in Vegas to prepare people to go to Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport. So I was like, ‘this is what I’m doing.’ He was like, ‘don’t tell anybody I’m showing up.’ And I didn’t tell anybody. Not even the promoter knew until the day of. I was like, ‘we’re doing this old school, we’re not telling anybody. I’m going to wrestle Dan Severn and then afterward, somebody’s going to show up.’”
Moxley was the one who thought that Kross would reach success in WWE: “So he comes down, we work, we barely talk about anything,” Kross said. “The natural, rhythmic chemistry was awesome. I’m talking to him after the match and he says, ‘hey, where do you want to go? What do you want to do?’ And I’m just rattling off these ideas and stuff like that. He’s like, ‘hey, do whatever you want. I’m not going to tell you what to do. But one day, Roman (Reigns) is going to need somebody else to work with after he’s done working with Drew (McIntyre). And I’m just saying, I think you would do very well there. But go wherever you want, do whatever you want to do.’ In my mind, I’m like, ‘holy sh*t. This is a person who’s been at the highest level, recently too. It’s not like it was a few years ago.’ I was very humbled by that and I thought to myself, ‘if he’s fu**ing saying that to me, what other sort of level of assurance do I need? I need to stop fu**ing around here.’”
“So he was basically like, ‘just call Hunter.’ I was like, ‘what do you mean?’ He said, ‘just call Hunter.’ He said it like it was nothing. ‘Call him and tell him you just want to show up.’ I was like, ‘really?’ ‘Yeah. I’m going to give him your number. Give me your phone right now.’ I was just like, ‘holy sh*t.’ That was a lot for me. We just wrestled in front of 130 people in a warehouse and then he’s like, ‘yeah, just call Hunter.’ When the time was right, I basically called Hunter. It was so funny. I had sent him a text, just so he wasn’t getting a number randomly out of anywhere. And I basically told him in the first conversation, I said, ‘look sir, I’d love to be a part of the company. If you think I have any sort of value to contribute to the show, I have a lot of really interesting ideas.’ I talked to him about monetizing certain types of characters and symbols like that. I tried to appeal to the business sense. That company can hire wrestlers from anywhere, finding wrestlers isn’t really a problem. It’s finding that sort of total package thing, that’s kind of how Hunter and I began talking.”
Kross’ WWE career was excellent in NXT, but his short main roster tenure was problematic to say the least. He however made a big name for himself in WWE and looks to keep going outside of it, as he recently said when he confirmed that he wants another match with Moxley.
