Karrion Kross Felt That He Betrayed His Fans During First WWE Main Roster Run

Karrion Kross was one of the first people that Triple H brought back to the company after he was made the Chief Creative Officer of WWE, and Kross' presentation is vastly different now from his last main roster run. The previous character was one that fans weren't onboard with, and Kross told "The Ringer," that he was "betraying everything that I wanted to contribute."

"The first time I came out with the mask there were people laughing in the audience, they were laughing. I always remembered getting into this business thinking to myself, 'when this is all said and done, I want to leave this place a better place than it was before I came in,'" he said. "You want to make people around you better, you want the product to get better ... for me, I am always chasing the perfect match, that's like my wrestling philosophy, I am chasing the perfect story."

That wasn't the case for him at that point, and it's a situation he was hyper aware of as he said, "the fan in me is still alive," which is how Kross knew that the previous presentation wasn't connecting with the WWE Universe, which he doesn't believe is the case anymore. "The difference between then and now, tonight I walked out and they were singing our theme music, the entire audience was singing our theme music," he said. "That's a moment we wanted to get to before the pandemic and I got that tonight."

Since his return to WWE, Kross' infamous helmet/mask combo has been nowhere to be seen, and he revealed that he "just left it in the props truck" during his previous run with the company. But despite that character not working out for him, he didn't find all of it to be a negative.

"I didn't hate it, honestly," he said. "I just thought that for continuity purposes it didn't make any sense, and that's why people couldn't get into it. We carved out a very specific supervillain in the first rendition of Karrion Kross in NXT, this is a guy that's completely and morbidly obsessed with time, and everything revolving around stopwatches and hourglasses ... he's going to take time off your life. Now he's coming out with no context without his partner in crime, and a new outfit, and an amputated presentation, so, it just pulled people out."

Kross compared it if a fan was watching "Game Of Thrones," and then a character was changed or would be dressed differently, as the former "WWE NXT" Champion believes "it takes you out of the narrative of the story." "I think that's what happened, I didn't think the character presentation was a bad idea, but just the way it was introduced it didn't make any sense," he said. "People were just going, 'This is not what we wanted.'" Under his new presentation, Kross was able to make his premium live event debut at WWE Extreme Rules, securing a victory against Drew McIntyre in a Strap Match, continuing his post-return undefeated streak.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "The Ringer" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.