WWE Star Received Praise Backstage After Controversial Main Roster Debut

WWE

WWE SmackDown star Karrion Kross has revealed that he received a lot of praise following his initial main roster debut.

After making his NXT in-ring debut in April 2020, Kross was extremely dominant, destroying all competition on route to the NXT Championship, which he won that August.

Forced to relinquish the gold due to injury, it didn’t take long for Kross to reach the main event scene again upon his return, with Kross defeating Finn Balor for the NXT Title in April 2021.

Kross was undefeated in singles competition following his WWE debut, until his first official match on the main roster.

On the July 19, 2021 edition of Raw, Jeff Hardy pinned the then-NXT Champion in a matter of minutes. This result outraged NXT fans who felt that Kross had been buried upon his main roster arrival.

Speaking on Cheap Heat with Peter Rosenberg, Kross noted that many backstage shook hands with him after the bout for doing the job.

Kross said:

“I got a lot of people coming up to me shaking hands after doing that actually (debut on Raw and losing to Jeff Hardy). People — I won’t drop names but people that are many, many years deep in saying, ‘This guy gets it.’

“It’s not a one-man show, it’s not about me coming up here making crazy demands. I got a lot of respect actually from my peers when we’re doing that and to me, I would have done that really with anybody because as I said, with the run that I got in NXT, I never politicked, never buried anybody.

“They put me on course to be a star and this one thing that they’re asking me to do, it’s nothing.”

Kross was released by WWE later that year, in November.

The former NXT Champion and his wife Scarlett made their WWE returns in August, under the Triple H regime.

Scarlett recently returned to the ring at a WWE house show. For an update on her wrestling future, click here.

Transcription via POST Wrestling. 

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• Jeff Hardy
• Karrion Kross
• Debut
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