10 Collector’s Items Of Modern WWE Brilliance
3. The Karrion Kross Push
The Karrion Kross push is WWE operating with an almost playful effectiveness.
This is what they do, or what they used to do. They used to build monsters. They used to love monsters. They used to be able, through a robust playbook and production magic, to make talent feel gigantic. WWE has applied this literally in the case of Karrion Kross.
His promos are framed, in close-up, in such a way that if the camera were to peel back, Kross would look as tall as a skyscraper. The aura he has developed heightens the illusion; he annihilated top star Tomasso Ciampa in his first big match, conditioning fans to take him seriously from the jump.
It's not all aesthetics and committed booking - Kross looks like the killer he can no longer be called with his dangerous suplex game and intense energy - but the aesthetics work to accentuate the character.
The ticking clock and hourglass imagery, while on the nose, further the idea that this man is going to inevitably dominate the very top of NXT for a long time - and that it will take a babyface in the form of their life to vanquish him. That babyface isn't there yet, which is an indictment of NXT. They used to excel at the feel-good tale.
But Kross alone is evidence that NXT hasn't gone Full Road Dogg just yet.