After recent showings by AEW and WWE in the area, another contender for your wrestling attention span is landing in town Thursday. Major League Wrestling throws the Battle Riot show in Kissimmee with a worldwide cast of heavyweights and some very familiar faces. You’ve got prime-time players like Shotzi Blackheart, Donovan Dijak, Bishop Dyer, Killer Kross, Scarlett Bordeaux and the Good Brothers joining mainstays like Krule, Hammerstone, Paul London and Matt Riddle. Not to mention an international contingent including Templario, Kushida, Okumura and Ikuro Kwon.
Orlando Weekly chatted to MLW (and former WWE) star Killer Kross about his return to the promotion, creative freedom in pro wrestling, his expectations for Battle Riot, and justifying his love for No Country for Old Men … in the ring.
Are you enjoying your return run at MLW? Two sub questions of that: How do you see yourself fitting into their roster as it currently stands? And is it a better fit for you at this point in your creative life than WWE?
I’m enjoying it very much. Having the time to get in there and work in the main event has been something I used to have a long time ago, and having that just provides me a window to give a very different performance than having shorter matches on TV with like a commercial break right in the middle.
Where I see myself fitting in? I don’t necessarily think about it in that regard, for me it’s contributing a version of myself to the show that people have wanted to see for many years, and I want to give them some things that they were unaware of, that I could do as a performer. So that’s kind of how I frame that in my mind as I’m approaching what I’m going to be contributing.
And as to if it’s a better fit than WWE, I would say that there’s a particular type of performance people have been looking to see out of me for the last couple of years, which is working in the main event and having the time allotted to have those sort of matches. When you think about your favorite matches, as a wrestling fan, there’s just no way that you have a No. 1 favorite match or a top five favorite matches that don’t have stories attached to them. It’s a storytelling business. So while you could have the greatest performers in the world in the ring that can do certain things that absolutely nobody else can do, if there’s not a story attached, it lands differently to a person versus them watching a story-based wrestling match that’s been built up, right?
And so when Matt Riddle and I competed at the last MLW event in the Carolinas, there was a story that I was able to introduce with him to the fans online. And it was a story about two friends that seemed to be on the fence that have trained together for a long time. Things got a little awkward, and one of them decided to take the match. There was, like some passive-aggressive comments being made, one of them gets choked out in practice all the time. There was a moment where I was able to freely build something that I knew people would enjoy, and I was gifted that opportunity to create that and basically set the stage for us to go in there and give people a reason as to why these two characters are going to be competing.
Would you talk a little more about weaving all of those narratives together both in and out of the ring? Is it a challenge fitting all the pieces?
No, I love it. I love the process of being able to create something that people are going to enjoy. I’ve been like that since I was little. Like, even back to the most basic things you could think of, when I was drawing when I was little, illustrating and painting. I love to be able to just get a blank sheet of paper or eventually a white canvas. And you can give me acrylic, you can give me watercolor, you can give me crayons, you can give me markers, you can give me charcoal. I have a small book that I actually illustrate with charcoal. When I really don’t want to be on my phone and I’m traveling, or I don’t want to see anything or talk to anybody, I pull out this little book and I draw all kinds of wild shit there. But I used to give those drawings away to people. I would oftentimes illustrate or create things that I like, but I would do it with the intention to give it to somebody else, hoping they would enjoy it. That mannerism and that behavioral pattern has kind of been with me since I was little and it’s evolved into dedicating my life to being a professional wrestler and giving performances that people can watch with their friends and family together, and they can talk about and remember for forever. Like when I was little and I watched matches with my friends and family.
So I’ve always been that way. Like when you say the word “challenging,” I don’t necessarily have something that kind of like, it’s a green light that goes off my head. Is it challenging? Oh yeah, of course, it’s challenging. If it wasn’t challenging, it probably wouldn’t be as appealing or fun to me. But it’s not challenging in a way that frustrates me or that turns me away from it.
Do you feel you have a little bit more freedom to be creative here in MLW versus the last WWE run? Towards the end of that, you were sort of creating your own stories on the side and it was resonating with people, are you still using that momentum?
Yes and yes. Short one! Look. It’s something I love about MLW. And it’s not to say it’s not like this anywhere else, but I’ll just say something I love about MLW: It is understood across the board that it is to everyone’s advantage for every single performer to be as engaging and over as possible with the audience. It actually helps everyone. It helps the show. I don’t feel in the time that I’ve been back that MLW is kneecapping people from getting reactions at all.
You’re, by all means, able to go out there and if you want to try, you can have the absolute best performance you possibly can have within the time allotted. And there will be no issues or problems with it if you’d like to promote it as much as possible online, leading up to the event in a way that doesn’t compromise what you’re doing long term with whatever story you’re telling. They’re all for it, and I enjoy that. Like I’m not interested in doing the bare minimum for the most money.
You’ll be competing in the Battle Riot — 40-man battle royale style match — in Kissimmee this week …
Battle Riot is going to be like 40 guys fighting elimination-style, either it’s over the top rope, pinfall, submission. There’s no DQ, which works to my advantage, because occasionally I do like to cheat. I have a problem. So I don’t know what my number is, but I’ve cut down from my weight. I went up to super-heavyweight following my WWE departure, there was a super-heavyweight tournament at DEFY Wrestling so I bulked up to 275. I am back down to 255 and I was doing that by just lowering my calories. I almost stopped lifting weights altogether, and I just started doing running, hiking, climbing, jiu jitsu. I did that because the more you weigh, that takes away from your cardio. I have no idea, this could be the shortest match of my life! I could be thrown out immediately, or it could be the longest match of my life and I could be out there for more than an hour. A cool luxury of being on my own schedule is I can pick and choose the dates that I would like to work and what I’m doing and where I’m going. And I was actually able to take the last two or three weeks to just change my diet, my activity level completely and drop away from 275 to 255. I’m anticipating that anything could happen, so I better get as light as possible, because it could potentially be a long night.
This freedom … it’s a unique career arc where you’re constantly taking the left turn when people expect you to go right …
I would say that’s true. It’s very true. But I am a team player. I really am. And I like being a team player. I like the idea of teams. I like the idea of family and people being close and connected. I really, really like connection but not at the expense of integrity.
You’re on the record as a film buff but I had no idea you based some of your MLW persona on No Country for Old Men?
Yeah! So for awhile, I was wrestling as Kevin Kross. That’s how I started wrestling. And people started calling me Killer Kross. That started on social media. Then that led over into the independents and stuff like that. They’re calling me Killer Kross. And I remember talking to some of my friends and the promoters, and I was like, “Maybe I should run with that.” That’s kind of cool, like I’m not calling myself that, they’re calling me that. That’s like something they’re gifting to me.
I was wrestling as a heel. And let me tell you, I was not playing both sides of the fence, like trying to be the cool heel. I was giving the middle finger to people, like ripping up kids’ signs, like I was doing all of the stuff to make sure people did not like me. But I think they appreciated the commitment to it and just liked me even more.
So I wound up working with Shane Douglas. And Shane had told me in this period of his life he didn’t think it’d be a good idea if he was taking any high-neck bumps. I was like, “No problem.” And he’s like, “So what are we going to do about the Doomsday Saito suplex?” And I said, “We don’t need it.” I’ll tease it. I’ll go for it and you’ll fight out of it. And I said, “How do you feel about a choke?” And he was like, Oh, that’s great. He’s like, I promise you, I will sell that better than the Saito or the match might be over and I’ll have to go to the hospital, Yeah, we’re not doing that, Shane. Being a professional is being able to adapt to that. If you need a particular move to do a performance, you’re not really a professional, you’re a lunatic.
So I was watching No Country for Old Men on the flight over and just had that moment in my head where Javier Bardem was playing Anton Chigurh in the movie. He’s a hitman. He gets arrested and this police officer’s on the phone, and the shot was very much like how you and I are looking at each other, and Javier Bardem gets up behind him, starts walking up to him, and he wraps the handcuffs around the cop’s throat, and he leans back. And I thought, “We’re doing a no-DQ match. What if I over-tape my hands, and I start to take some of the tape off so I have some slack, and I wrap it over Shane’s neck?”
We have the tape, and it’s no DQ. And I’m thinking about crowd heat. Like, “Oh, Shane was going to beat him but he had to cheat.” I’m just trying to think of something that would piss people off, because they want to see Shane win, but I’m taking it away right before he’s about to do it in a very shitty way. So we did that. Shane’s foaming at the mouth. He held his breath, and he tucked his chin so his face contorted and he’s purple. It was a really cool moment. I have pictures of it from people in the front row for forever. And then people started posting the picture of me choking Shane like 50/50, with Anton Chigurh. That was pretty cool. They knew what I was doing. I just eventually let them call me Killer Kross. And then I think eventually I just did a T-shirt with Killer Kross on it, And people like we MK-Ultra’d you! All right, I’m Killer Kross.
MLW: Battle Riot happens at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee (ohpark.com). Tickets are still available from $13-$61.
