During a recent appearance on “The Ariel Helwani Show,” WWE Superstar Karrion Kross discussed the recent WWE releases of Paul Ellering and the Authors of Pain (Akam and Rezar) and expressed concern about his own job security following these layoffs.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On WWE releasing Paul Ellering and AOP: “They give me A.O.P. and they give me Paul Ellering and I don’t know them. I know Paul. I grew up watching him on TV. I get to know these guys, really like ‘em and it’s just the nature of our business. One minute you’re here, the next you’re not. You know, that was a bit of a tough hit. Frustrating, you know? Nothing you can do about it. You gotta get present. You grieve the situation, you gotta move forward, and I just felt like there was a lot of touch-and-go with certain things going on. On the way from there, we go to WrestleMania in Las Vegas. Lot of emotions. Everything happened the way it did. Things are crazy but, in a strange way, I wouldn’t change any of it. Because as a result of everything that’s happened, I would say over the last five years, it’s put me in a place to now have a relationship with the audience that you wouldn’t be able to write or fabricate, you wouldn’t be able to create this. What’s happening right now is absolutely nuts.”
On if he was worried about his job after Ellering and AOP were let go: “Not necessarily because I kind of have a process when something upsets me or I’m angry. I don’t avoid it. I get into it, I grieve it and then I move on. I try to stay as present as possible. I don’t think it’s a good place to brood in a place that’s not producing what you want for your life. So I just said to myself what I say to myself literally every week was… ‘This week, no matter what I’m given, no matter what’s going on, I’m gonna try really, really hard to make a connection with the audience because I know they wanna be connected.’”
On not being on TV for a while: “It’s a strange thing. For a time, even in this stretch, I wasn’t on TV for a little bit. I think it may have been, off the top of my head, three or five months. I don’t remember. I don’t spend time thinking about that. But I was on live events and there was no story going on on TV and when we were coming out, we were doing what we call ‘cold matches,’ and when we were walking out — I’m established as a bad guy. I just personally think I’m misunderstood (he smirked).”
On how he started getting cheers despite being the heel: “The crowd was cheering for us when we walked out and I looked at my wife (Scarlett) and I went, ‘Huh?’ There’s been this underlying thing that again, television audience doesn’t see, where people have wanted to cheer for us, and I think that’s because they’re sick and disturbed like us. They want to. They wanna do it and we’ve been giving ‘em reasons not to and I think we should stop doing that.”
