In an interview with Mike Johnson of PWInsider.com, Karrion Kross talked about suffering a shoulder injury and having to relinquish the WWE NXT title in 2020:
“Well, in my mind at the time it was pretty terrifying, because I feel like I’m a pretty grounded person and I understand how the general public looks at entertainment in general. We’re dehumanized. For me going through that, I was very concerned that people, maybe even my employers, might check out. It’s a business at the end of the day. And they really had no obligation professionally to allow me to have that run and do what I was doing. So in my mind, I was like, ‘I need to prepare for the worst-case scenario, worst-case situation.’ That I may come back and I may not be the same, the way my body responds to hitting the canvas or the way I’m moving. I had no idea what it’s going to be like. I may come back, everything could be rewritten, everything could be different and I just have to respect that. So I trained and prepared myself mentally, as I said, for anything to happen. And the absolute best outcome actually came out of it and I just needed to do the work, so to speak. I just, I did my absolute best at demonstrates, emotional composure, professional composure, and focus on how I can improve every single day with the small victories. So at the end of it all, I think it was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life. Nevermind professionally, I feel like a stronger person mentally, physically now than I did before. And that was my silver lining of the whole experience.”
Kross was also asked if he thinks the injury helped with his confidence:
“I absolutely do. And even in strange ways that people might not even consider. For instance, anyone who ever goes through an injury now, a serious one, that’s in my proximity, I feel they’re very confident to talk to them about where they’re at and talk to them about the things that they might not feel comfortable talking to their bosses about or even people personally, you’re living in a state of severe vulnerability, even from a psychological standpoint or sociology, if you want to reference it to that. People have an identity subconsciously based on what they can do. Now you take away somebody’s arm or their leg or their ability to just do something that they wake up doing every day, it’s like an ego death. And you need to be aware of that, need to be able to look that in the face and be like, ‘I am more than what’s happening to me.’ I feel like I could take somebody through that, and that’s what I got out of it. I feel very complete as a person. I feel like I understand myself better now as a man than I did prior to even getting hurt.”
