Former WWE Superstars Killer Kross and Scarlett Bordeaux interviewed Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette as he discusses his run on the WWE main roster, along with his WWE main roster debut loss from Monday Night RAW a couple months ago.
Killer Kross on jobbing to Jeff Hardy in his main roster debut: “When I went up and they asked me to do the match with Jeff and put him over, I was like, ‘Sure, that’s fine.’ I grew up a fan of Jeff and getting to meet him and him being cool was an awesome experience, he’s literally one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. ‘That’s fine.’ One of the agents came to me and was like, ‘There’s a long-term plan for this so don’t sweat it and don’t worry.’ Okay, cool. I do my entrance and get out there. The ref comes to me and goes, ‘Hey, your 10 minute match is down to 90 seconds.’ First time we’re working on television, we don’t really know each other in the ring, our rhythm, they come back from commercial and I’m trying not to laugh. If you go back and watch, I’m smiling, closed mouth, trying to hold it back. As soon as Jeff got in the ring, I snatched him and called what we needed to do and that was it.”
On remaining on NXT to continue his feud with Samoa Joe after his main roster debut: “When I went back to NXT the next day, I spoke with someone there and I go, ‘Look, my biggest fear right now is that there’s a hole being dug for me and I’m nervous that if I’m not permitted to crawl out of it myself and people absolve themselves of the creative situation, I’m not going to be a return of investment, I’m going to get fired. What do you think I should do? Part of this business is doing what you are told.’ My intuition was telling me that everything was off and felt wrong and I felt something bad coming four months before it happened, but everyone I talked to was like, ‘No, everyone loves you. There are no problems,’ but I felt it coming. I tried to, as professionally polite as I could, talk to people in the chain of command and be a good sport.”
Killer Kross on being informed about the gladiator mask: “I got an email with what it was supposed to look like. Apparently, the music was supposed to change, the entrance was supposed to change, and it was supposed to be an enhanced version. When I saw the picture of it, I showed it to [Scarlett] and I just started laughing. I said, ‘I can be comfortable wearing this, but it’s not going to get over in 2021.’”
Scarlett Bordeaux on there being no explanation for the changes: “It’s confusing because, why is the music that I’m singing still there? Then, there’s a mask there, but there’s no explanation. If there’s one promo to explain why he a mask on. Why Scarlett is still singing, but when there’s no explanation, people feel like they had something taken away. If it had been a new song and presentation, people would have been like, ‘Okay, this is new,’ but it just felt like an amputated version of what it was.”
Kross on why he went along with the changes: “Nobody wants a reputation of being difficult to work with. Nobody wants a reputation of being a mark for themselves or not wanting to do business. Here I am, I personally had the dream experience in NXT. I walked in there, my ideas were embraced, we collectively collaborated. I felt inclined as a professional to embrace the ideas given to me because that’s all I was getting in NXT. If I had an idea and I had something I wanted to say or had an idea to contribute something, it was always met with enthusiasm or if they thought the idea was not great, they would make it better. I thought to myself, ‘I owe it to them to engage with this.’”
Kross on the differences between the main roster and NXT: “It’s a two-way street and you don’t have any control over it. As it was explained to me, it was two separate entities. NXT couldn’t interfere or expand or be involved for anything going on with the main roster from a creative standpoint. With the transition, there was nothing that could be done, they just said, ‘ask lots of questions.’”
