Posted on 10/08/125 by Colin Vassallo
Killer Kross and Scarlett sat down with Chris Van Vliet at
West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, California to
discuss their time in WWE coming to an end, the
conversations regarding contracts possibly being renewed,
the viral promo after WrestleMania and the reaction to it,
being added to WrestleMania at the last minute, what’s next
for them in wrestling, possibly returning to WWE or signing
with AEW, and more!
On the day the contract expired:
Scarlett: “I’d say we knew for months what was happening,
what was going to happen. I hope it’s okay for me to say
this, but I’m kind of his Game of Thrones Red Woman. I have
been for a long time when it comes to astrology and looking
things up, and a lot of the stuff I do on the paranormal
show is a bit real with the tarot cards. So I did see that
we were going to have some sort of contract dispute, but it
was going to take a while. And I did feel in my gut like
we’re going to step away since like, February.”
Karrion Kross: “I mean, we’ve told very few people about
that, but yeah.”
Were you trying to make things work then?
Kross: “Always trying to make things work, always trying to
make the best of anything and everything, right?”
Scarlett: “You approached Hunter back in January, actually
letting him know that you want to stay.”
Kross: “And you. I said we would both like to stay.”
On Scarlett’s contract negotiations:
Scarlett: “So after you talked to the representative of
talent relations about your contract. One of the last
questions before the 24-hour notice was given, Kevin asked
where I stood in all these contract negotiations. And they
said, ‘We’ll get to her once we’re done with you,’ which I
took as them using me as leverage against him. I do feel
like if he agreed within the 24 hours that they would have
offered me something, would it have been the same amount as
it was before? Would it have been less? I don’t know. But
all in all, it felt like a massive, massive red flag, and I
did feel like it did come off a bit misogynistic, because
originally I was hired before you, and the idea that I have
no value without him, and it’s only determined by whether or
not he signs, that came off as very misogynistic to me.”
Kross: “I told you this a long time ago, but didn’t really
ever publicly talk about this. When I signed to go from NXT
to Raw, somebody said the exact same thing to me over the
phone. I asked her, I said, ‘What do you think?’ At that
time we had no reason to ever think it would be strange or
go sideways, so I signed it, being told we’ll get to her
after we get to you. I go up to Raw, then we go into like
Mad Max and the ThunderDome, and she’s at home. So I was
like, well, I’m not gonna do that again. We already saw
exactly what happened with that.”
Scarlett: “I was clear to manage, but not wrestle. So at any
point, I could have come up and done exactly what we did on
NXT, but they said they wanted to separate us and wanted me
to wrestle once I was clear after the breast augmentation
that popped during that dark match. But then I was cleared,
and it was a few days later that they actually fired both of
us.”
Kross: “She was at TakeOver when I wrestled Joe to drop the
belt, she was ready to manage, and they told her, ‘Don’t go
out.’ We’re just like, what’s going on here? I was like, can
we address this publicly? And they were like, ‘No, don’t
talk about it.’ I was like, This is bizarre.”
On his viral promo after WrestleMania:
Kross: “So we do that. Everybody loved it. We leave. The
next day was weird at Raw. So aside from everything that
I’ve talked about, so we don’t talk about it again, I get a
phone call from somebody in talent relations, and he says,
‘Creative is not happy. There’s heat. They’re pissed.’ I was
like, Well, I apologize about that. Let me go take care of
that right now. I have a great relationship with them.
They’re right across the hall. He’s like uh, I said, ‘No,
no, dude, this is my fault. Let me take care of it. No
problem.’ I go across the hall. I speak to some of the
writers, explain everything. They’re like, ‘We have no idea
what you’re talking about. We haven’t talked to that guy in
two weeks.’ Some of them didn’t even see it. So I was like,
What’s going on here? So walk around the building and just
looking at everything, everyone’s saying, Hello, everything
feels fine. I call him back, no answer. The next day, no
answer. I think it was like the third day he finally picked
up. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I shouldn’t have said it that way. I
apologize, it was actually Hunter.’ And I was like, man. ‘So
since we spoke, have you talked to Hunter and explained
everything to him that I explained to you?’ He’s like, ‘No.’
And I was like, so you’re letting our boss just sit there
and fume for how many days now? You could have just told me
this on Monday. He was down the hall. Could go talk to him
and just explain all this. This is like a misunderstanding.
So I eventually did speak with Hunter and cleared the air
with him, you know, it’s a massive company with a lot of
different departments, and not all of them are in lockstep
with communication. He was super cool about it once we spoke
to him, he understood where I was coming from and what I was
trying to do. It wasn’t like a live thing. It was on
YouTube. But just weird.”
On what’s next for them:
Kross: “To be honest, everything we’ve been doing has been
really enjoyable. I’ll speak for me personally, having the
freedom to assess the audience, where we’re at on the show,
where we’re out on the card, who I’m working with, what
everyone else is going to be doing on the show, and how to
diversify what we’re going to do on the tail end of it, and
be able to bring that to life and hear the reactions and
feel that. I mean, I love being in WWE, but being able to
actually perform my artistry in the way that I know people
want to see it, and being able to hear that and feel that
back, nothing beats that. Nothing beats that. I want to do
more of that. I want to go back to the places that I was
performing. I’m interested in going to new places. I’m very
content with the schedule that we’ve been building and what
we’re doing, going to the conventions, being able to meet
fans, aligning that with the book tour, man, it’s been
awesome. Being able to meet people, especially the New
England area, people coming from Providence, that’s where
things really took off with the ‘We want Kross’ stuff.
There’s people driving from all over the northeast to meet
us in these different places, in these cities, and they all
have their story about where they were when that took off.
Being able to hear that people getting tattoos of our
characters on them.”
Scarlett: “People naming their babies after us. I know that
sounds insane, but people have come up saying, Hey, this is
‘Scarlett Karrion.’ And there’s been another Scarlett.”
Kross: “Just being able to show up anywhere, at any time and
do anything, and creating an air of unpredictability at
these shows, I think also serves something very interesting
to fans as well.”