12 Times WWE Buried Their Own Champions

12. Karrion Kross Makes NXT Look Less-Than

At the risk of making Karrion Kross sound like Gene Snitsky, it wasn't his fault.

Kross was reigning NXT Champion when he was called up to the WWE main roster and debuted on the 19 July 2021 Raw. Anyone excited by the thought of this would soon come crashing right back down to earth when the menacing heel champ lost to Jeff Hardy in around 2 minutes. Ouch. This wasn't quite the Raw debut that anyone had envisioned for the guy, to say the least.

From there, Karrion dropped his NXT belt to Samoa Joe at TakeOver 36 on 22 August and officially joined the main touring crew after that. Not content with jobbing his new man out, Vince McMahon changed up Kross's look to include some goofy props that sort of made him look like the cast member of a 1990s children's TV show.

Everything that had turned Karrion into such a force on NXT immediately vanished. Scarlett wasn't by his side, and he lacked the presence he'd had by the bucketload down in developmental. It was a masterclass in stripping away everything that had made Kross viable for a promotion in the first place. Baffling.

Worse followed. Both Karrion and Scarlett got released on 4 November, and the pair wouldn’t return until August 2022 under Triple H's watch. Another so-so spell followed before Kross watched his contract tick down. He claims that WWE only gave him a short window to agree fresh terms, and that they didn't want to sign Scarlett. So, he decided to leave instead.

That second saga is a sorry one, but it's nowhere near as pathetic as what happened in 2021.