Ahead of facing WWE Cruiserweight Champion Santos Escobar in a No Disqualification Match On the 24th February edition of NXT, Karrion Kross has detailed his arduous comeback from a recent shoulder injury.
Kross sustained the injury in defeating Keith Lee for the NXT Championship back at NXT TakeOver 30 in August 2020, but was back in double quick time, returning in just three months.
Speaking to Sportskeeda ahead of his much anticipated clash with Santos, Kross has revealed that he’s currently feeling better than ever, as if the injury never happened.
“I feel like the injury never even happened. I came out a lot better than I thought I was going to be out of that situation, but the ligaments completely blew off the bone when that injury happened. I had no idea what that was going to be like coming back. But I (have) full stability back in my shoulder, full strength. I’m doing handstands and military press. I had zero issues with it. So I’m definitely feeling very good. I could put this shoulder through the back of his (Escobar) head, which is probably what I’m going to be looking forward to this Wednesday.”
Kross certainly raised eyebrows when he returned in December, just three months after sustaining such a serious injury. The former NXT Champion went on to detail the “vicious” rehab and how he wanted to get back into the ring as quickly as possible.
“It was pretty vicious. I decided to do a lot of extra curricular rehabbing as well on my shoulder. So I would go into WWE medical and they would put me through a very rigorous process of rebuilding stability and getting the inflamation down in the joint. When I came home, I would bring all of the equipment that they would give me to use and I would do it three to four times a day. It wasn’t necessary to do that, but I wanted to come back as quickly as possible.”
It had been expected that Kross would be out of action for between eight months and a year, but after choosing not to have surgery to fix the injury, he instead threw himself straight into rehab.
“I was like, ‘there’s no way that’s happening.’ I opted out of surgery. I took a holistic approach. I went on a very clean diet. I changed everything. I put all the time that I would normally put into training into my rehab process and compressed that eight to 12 month window down to three months with no surgery. So I’m very proud of that. It was really hard. It was really, really hard.”
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