In an interview with Chris Van Vliet for Insight (via Fightful), Karrion Kross discussed his online feud with Bobby Lashley, clarifying that there was no genuine animosity between them. He explained that the entire situation was staged to set up a match for WrestleMania. The feud began when Lashley made remarks on The Bump, which Kross later described as “unprofessional” in a conversation with Bobby Fish.
Kross said the following:
Zero. It was a work. Zero. He knows I feel this way about him, it’s not the first time I’m saying it, and unless you asked me, I never would have said it. I love that dude to death. After the match, I wanted to tell him after because I didn’t want him to think I was buttering him up before we went out, I told him after the match was done. I expressed how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, and what an honor it was to work with him. I remember when they brought ECW back, WWE did, people can say whatever they want about it, I thought his section of the ECW Champioship was awesome. I loved it. I was a bit of an ECW snob growing up, a bit of a snob fan, ‘Oh, ECW Originals.’ I didn’t care. ‘He’s awesome. He looks like the fucking Hulk.’ He’s diving out of the ring, doing crazy stuff, putting people through tables. For me, personally, fast forward, now I’m working at 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 felt there were certain things on the way there that felt redundant. That’s not me being salty or anything, him and I want to give and want 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. There was one time where Bob was like, ‘You know what we should do? All these guys, they like to talk and run to the dirtsheets. We should fight. At the beginning of the show, we should get into a fight. All these guys are going to go and call the dirtsheets and tell them we had a fight, and it’s going to stir people up to what we’re doing on TV.’ I was like, ‘Bob, hold on a second, what happens if no one breaks up the fight?’ He’s like, ‘Damn I didn’t think about that.’ ‘Also, what happens if we get fired? What are we going to do? Hunter [Triple H] is going to pull us aside and be like, What’s wrong with you guys?’ ‘It’s a work.’ ‘You guys are bleeding. What are you doing?’ The whole logical process of having to explain that it was a work and hoping the office would have been okay that we did that. I was like, ‘Let’s hold off on this idea. I love crazy stuff like this, but please, let’s hold off.’ Him and I were, every single week, trying to make this as insane as humanly possible.
