Karrion Kross lifted the lid on the formation of the Final Testament.
Kross leads the group, which also includes Scarlett, Paul Ellering, Akam and Rezar. They were formed earlier this year, and have remained a key part of Raw since being drafted in April.
Karrion Kross recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet on Insight about how the Final Testament was created. He admitted that he was worried people would be disappointed, but he had ideas for who to bring into the group.
“So for quite some time, I had several people in creative tell me that there was an idea being entertained of me leading a group. They had a bunch of people that they were interested in putting together with us, and I had a certain set of people that I was interested in bringing in.”
“Maybe at this time, I don’t say who, but one day I will say who, because I don’t want it to be taken the wrong way, people wind up getting disappointed and whatever. But someone had mentioned to me that AOP was on the roster with Paul Ellering, and I was like, wait what? Since when? Apparently they’ve been there for a while. They’re looking for the right time to bring them into the fold. And they said, Okay, we can try that for sure.”
Karrion Kross
Karrion Kross continued, comparing their original vignettes to Iron Man 3. He also noted that he wanted the group to stay away from the reoccurring archetypes that are so common, especially in professional wrestling.
“So we all meet at the Performance Center and we start shooting these cryptic vignettes. It was almost like Iron Man 3 with The Mandarin when he had all the TVs behind him. Ben Kingsley, and he’s like, they’ll never see me coming, these propaganda videos. It was really cool. I loved the setup. And initially the direction we were going in was sort of like. Almost like a militia occult group.”
“I’ve always been one to try to stay away from reoccurring archetypes. There’s nothing wrong with reoccurring archetypes in professional wrestling and films and movies and all that. They just they are what they are. There’s reoccurring archetypes and the whole stories in the world relating to now. But I wanted to kind of present something new to people, something fun with some nostalgia callbacks, and, yeah, that’s kind of how it started. We’ve gone in some different directions.”
‘We Were A Mixed Martial Arts Group. That’s Not A Good Idea’
Karrion Kross revealed that the group almost became an MMA group, which he was not thrilled with.
“At one point, they were like, we kind of want you to be like a mixed martial arts group. I was like, that’s not a good idea. When you think about the times that we’re being given to work, a mixed martial arts type of wrestler would be good in a 20 to 30 minute format, because now you have time to get into the holds and stuff. When you put people in holds and you’re doing submissions and stuff, it’s a lot of flat time.”
“So if the show’s moving quick and we want to keep the action going, what am I going to do? Put on a knee bar for three seconds? All of us can do all of that stuff, but we thought leaning more into the character direction rather than that would be a better thing to do. I wish we had 20 or 30 minutes. I would have walked down to Ken Shamrock’s music, give me the whole thing!”
