Killer Kross: Triple H Is A Natural Leader. I Never Saw Him Play Favorites.

Killer Kross talks about his time working underneath Triple H and Shawn Michaels in NXT.

Killer Kross, the former Karrion Kross in WWE, had a strong run in NXT and even though it may have wavered when he went to the main roster, he looks back on his time NXT with great fondness, despite the injury that hindered his first run on top of the promotion.

While speaking to CBS Sports’ Shakiel Mahjouri, Killer Kross credited Triple H as a boss saying that he believes that he never plays favorites and says that working for Triple H and Shawn Michaels made the performers want to go above and beyond whenever they could.

“It was awesome. To me, he is a natural leader. He was not someone who ever had to raise his voice. He’s not someone who ever had to get angry for people to listen to him,” Kross said. “He was a person where I would come into work and he would be completely focused with each and every person he was working with. I never saw him play favorites. He never told you wanted to hear, he always told you what you needed to hear. He inspired people to be better versions of themselves at work.

“I could tell you for sure as much as people wanted to perform in this business for the fans, they also wanted to perform out of respect for Hunter and Shawn [Michaels] because of how much time they would put into them and helping them improve… They always say, ‘Never meet your heroes,’ right? I had a good feeling for it from the get-go. He’s definitely somebody for me, personally, that totally didn’t disappoint at all. He exceeded expectations of the person you think you want to meet from watching on TV growing up.”

One Superstar who arguably may have been favored by Triple H and Shawn Michaels if they did play favorites would be Adam Cole. The current AEW wrestler was on top for a number of years during his tenure in NXT and Killer Kross had a microphone clash with Adam Cole leading up to In Your House 2021.

During that promo, Adam Cole said some scathing things about Kross potentially being favored throughout his time in NXT. Speaking about this promo, Kross revealed it was all scripted and there was no actual tension between the two professionals.

“It may have been counterproductive of me not to address this earlier, but there are certain things that I think are important to protect. I probably never would have brought this up unless you asked,” Kross said. “Regarding that promo, the night before we had received a script. Everything that he said and everything that I said was delegated to us by a writing team. He’s a total professional, he was awesome to work with and we literally just showed up and did our job that day like we would do any other day. He’s always been the fourth wall promo guy. They thought that would be the best way to integrate him into the fatal five-way match, which is what we went into. If I recall, they were booking him with 50-50 booking after he dropped the title to Keith [Lee].

“How it was explained to me was they wanted me to go up to the main roster with clean kills on everybody. Time just wouldn’t afford it, so they thought how can we get the best guys in NXT in one match where Kross can go over and kill these guys? In this business, you can’t just run people over all month in promos and tag matches and stuff and then kill them clean at the pay-per-view. They get nothing. So, I think the idea behind that was to let them get their licks in prior to the pay-per-view, and then they just get smashed and beat. That was basically the idea behind it. Cole needed to look strong in the promo and they’re playing on the fourth wall stuff and that’s basically it.”

Recently, Killer Kross made it known that he is in talks with many different promotions. Learn more about that here.