Karrion Kross on his return to WWE, calling out Batista, the possibility of working with John Cena

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Karrion Kross
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com

On returning to WWE: “When Hunter reached out to Scarlett and I and basically just asked us, Do you guys want to come home? We were like, absolutely. So he had just said to us, I would like to kind of reprise, you know, what we had created in NXT and translate that to the main roster. And so without needing to have much more of a conversation beyond that, because we had worked together, he doesn’t have to over-explain himself, I get the idea and the vision. So did she. We were like well, let’s give the audience what they wanted that they never got when we came up. Like I can’t even, it was inescapable. When I was released, everywhere her and I went, fans were saying we just wanted to see you guys together and get that murder run on the main roster that you had on NXT, we wanted to see that translate. They wanted to see the guy, you know, come out of the ground and start fighting people on the mountain of the main rosters. It’s like, that whole thing. And we were just like, this is exactly what they want to see. It’s what we want to do, it was a no-brainer.”

On calling out Batista in 2019: “So it’s crazy how it can either happen immediately, or it can happen over time how people will attach like a crazy context to something that might not totally be accurate. So like when I called Dave out. My intention was, first of all, he was in the hotel, we were wrestling and it was a GCW event. He was filming a zombie film. Someone told me right before I walked through the curtain that Batista was here, and I was like, I want to meet him. They’re like, No, no, not here, he’s in the building. I went, Where? Oh, he’s in the building filming a movie of course, he’s filming a movie. And at that time, I was bummed to hear that he retired, I was a huge fan of his growing up. And just even being at the, you know, the smaller level that I was at the time.

“I love that. Like, I still love this. It’s hard for me to imagine not being in love with this anymore to the point where I would be comfortable and okay to retire. So I was thinking in that context at the time, like, there’s no way he doesn’t love this anymore. Maybe he just needs something creative that he would be really interested in. Because that’s all of us. You can hook us back into wrestling when we’re retired if there’s something you’re genuinely interested in doing creatively, and Dave has like a shoot background. He’s like a legit brown belt in jujitsu. So I go out there and I do the match with Nick Gage, choke him, get up. And yeah, call Batista out with the intention hoping that if he really didn’t want to be retired, and he wanted to do something that he’s never done before that would be in his wheelhouse that people have never seen him do, which would be like the shoot work stuff, I would have been happy.”

Did Batista respond to Karrion Kross? “I doubt it, but Josh [Barnett] knows him. Maybe Josh may have told him, but it was never in a way where it was like, you know, screw Dave Batista. No. Like you heard the reaction from people they really right away were like, it would be awesome to have Dave Batista on Bloodsport, it would be awesome. And like for people to see him move, legit. You know what I mean on the ground and free roll and flow with people that I think it would have been awesome.”

On a future match with John Cena: “I can’t say it’s not impossible. So during the lockdowns, fans were fantasy-booking tons of stuff. They started fantasy-booking me versus John Cena. That blew my mind. I was still in NXT. I was expecting maybe ideas and concepts like that would come at a later time one day when I’m on main roster, they were already saying they wanted to see that. Then I think one day John posted a picture of me on his Instagram with no caption, no context, and people went crazy over it. You know, unfortunately, some things happened from that point to where we are now where I was no longer with the company. And now I’m back and he’s here as well. Just thought I’d put it out there and see if people still felt about it.”