Since parting ways with WWE, Karrion Kross has returned to the independent circuit, where he's consistently competed and built his character up again. While he's not closed off to potentially signing with AEW or another big promotion, Kross does have a past with bare-knuckle boxing. However, that's not a road he'd be too keen to revisit any time soon. During his interview on "Insight with Chris Van Vliet," Kross didn't hesitate when asked if he'd go back to bareknuckle boxing. "Hell no!" he exclaimed, after which Scarlett Bordeaux added that he did bareknuckle boxing for many years.
"No, thank you. You know what it is? That demon inside me is gone, and thank God! Thank God."Kross further explained that in his book, he wrote about trying to balance what fighting was, noting how people tend to romanticize the physical aspect of it while there's a mental aspect they miss. "People are fighters and don't realize it, and they're good fighters that they can just, like I said, get out of bed and get through the day," he said. "I feel like a healthier person than I was when I wanted to do that."
Upon further expanding his reasons for not returning to bareknuckle boxing, KarrionKross expressed that he never felt good while actively competing in the sport."Almost every single time I knocked somebody out, I always felt bad. Like, 15 minutes later, I felt really bad," he recalled, joking that he can't remember how many people he's knocked out. Scarlett Bordeaux then added how she even urged him on to get back into it upon leaving WWE.
"I was really excited about it, but then you were like: 'You don't understand, like, I wake up in that place every day when I'm in that camp. Like, it's not good for me,'" she recalled.
Kross then admitted that he never managed the aggression he got from bareknuckle boxing well, and that he generally gets obsessive about things he takes on. "If I was going to be in a camp and I was going to be training and competing and doing all that stuff, now this is all I'm watching," he expressed. "Like for me? That's not for me."
Scarlett then pointed out that with bare-knuckle boxing, death is a reality, and oftentimes, you have to weigh your life against your opponent.
"That's not for me. That's for other people that manage that much better," he repeated. "I just respect what they do and I respect what that is, and I don't want to front like that's something that is going to be a thing I'm going to excel at this point in my life."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
