Karrion Kross Discusses Rehab Process For Shoulder Injury, How He Avoided Surgery

Karrion Kross captured the NXT Championship at TakeOver XXX when he defeated Keith Lee. Unfortunately, his reign was short-lived as he suffered a separated shoulder in the match and had to relinquish the title the following Wednesday on NXT. 

Kross returned to NXT television on December 9, just over three months after his injury, attacking Damian Priest. 

Speaking to Rick Ucchino of Sportskeeda, Kross revealed how he was able to quickly rehab and return, while also avoiding surgery. 

“I feel like the injury never even happened. I came out a lot better than I thought I was going to be out of that situation, but the ligaments completely blew off the bone when that injury happened. I had no idea what that was going to be like coming back. But I (have) full stability back in my shoulder, full strength. I’m doing handstands and military press. I had zero issues with it. So I’m definitely feeling very good. I could put this shoulder through the back of his (Escobar) head, which is probably what I’m going to be looking forward to this Wednesday,” he said. “[Rehab] was pretty vicious. I decided to do a lot of extracurricular rehabbing as well on my shoulder. So I would go into WWE medical and they would put me through a very rigorous process of rebuilding stability and getting the inflammation down in the joint. When I came home, I would bring all of the equipment that they would give me to use and I would do it three to four times a day. It wasn’t necessary to do that, but I wanted to come back as quickly as possible. I was like, ‘there’s no way that’s happening.’ I opted out of surgery. I took a holistic approach. I went on a very clean diet. I changed everything. I put all the time that I would normally put into training into my rehab process and compressed that eight to 12-month window down to three months with no surgery. So I’m very proud of that. It was really hard. It was really, really hard.”

Kross is set to face Santos Escobar in a No Disqualification bout on Wednesday’s NXT. You can view the current lineup for the show by clicking here.  

Fightful will have live coverage of NXT beginning at 8 p.m. ET.