Karrion Kross has addressed the question of whether or not he and Bobby Lashley actually had backstage tension.
On the second night of WrestleMania 40, Lashley and The Street Profits faced The Final Testament (Karrion Kross, Adkam, and Rezar) in a Philadelphia Street Fight. On The Bump ahead of the fight, Lashley stated that he felt handcuffed over the last year.
Lashley replied, “I get to fight. This whole year, I’ve been handcuffed lately. I’m looking at the main event. There’s 4 guys in the main event. I’ve beaten three of them. Not throwing it out there, just saying. I feel like I’ve been handcuffed a little bit. But this is my opportunity to beat up Kross and his boys and then we’re gonna look at bigger things afterwards.”
Lashley left WWE a few months ago and is set to make his AEW debut any week now. Kross discussed whether they had real-life heat during an appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet.
Kross said, “I hate that I’m saying this. But zero [real heat], it was a work. He knows I feel this way about him. It’s not the first time I’m saying it. And unless you would have asked me about this, I would have never said it. I love that dude to death. After the match, I wanted to tell him afterwards so he didn’t think I was trying to butter him up before we went out. I told him after the match was done, expressed how much I love him, how much I’ve looked up to him, and what an honor it was to work with him. I remember when WWE brought ECW back. People can say whatever they want about it. I thought his section of being ECW Champion was awesome. I loved it. I was a bit of an ECW snob growing up. I was like, ‘Oh, ECW originals!’ I didn’t care. He’s awesome. He looks like the f*cking Hulk, and he’s diving out of the ring and doing crazy stuff. He’s putting people through tables and stuff. And then, for me personally, fast forward now I’m working Mania with him. I told him all that at the end of the match. On the way to that Mania match, Bobby and I were constantly trying to find ways to intensify the conflict. Respectfully, we just felt like there were certain things on the way there that felt redundant. And it’s not me being salty about anything, it’s just him and I wanted to make this as intense and as crazy as possible. He had an idea to try to blur the lines on the way there, to make it feel as real as possible.”
Kross added, “There was even one time Bob was like, ‘You know what we should do? All these guys, they like to talk and they like to run to the dirt sheets and stuff. Dude, we should fight at the beginning of the show. We should get in a fight because all these guys are going to go and call the dirt sheets and tell them that we actually had a fight, and it’s going to stir people up into what we’re doing on TV.’ I was like, ‘Bob, what? Hold on a sec. First of all, what happens if nobody breaks up the fight?’ And he was like, ‘Damn, I didn’t think about that.’ I go, ‘Yeah, I didn’t think about that.’ Also, what happens if we get fired? Because what are we going to do? Hunter’s going to pull us aside and be like ‘What’s wrong with you guys?’ [We say] ‘Oh, it’s just a work.’ And he’s like, ‘You guys are bleeding, what are you doing?’ Then just the whole logical process of having to explain that it was a work and hoping that the office would have been okay with it, that we did that, and then it spilling. I was like let’s hold off on this idea. I said, I love crazy stuff like this, but please, let’s hold off on that idea. But like him and I were, every single week, trying to make this as insane as humanly possible. He wanted me to, and I would have done it. I’m glad I didn’t. In retrospect, he wanted me to powerbomb him out of the ring through a table at Mania.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
