25 Worst Wrestling Moments Of 2021

Karrion Kross's Monday Night Raw debut should serve as a stark reminder to everybody of just how bad NXT call-ups were treated back when Vince McMahon was in control. If Oba Femi being dumped out of the 2026 Royal Rumble by one of WWE's most destructive forces of all-time in Brock Lesnar was enough to push the audience's buttons, the kind of rib Vinnie Mac would pull on fans would have made them want to flush themselves down the toilet. 

Karrion Kross was a world champion in NXT, with a striking entrance and Scarlett's flamboyant presence bringing his whole presentation together as a spectacle. When he made his main roster debut on a random Monday Night Raw in July, he was stripped of all of this fanfare. He was booked to face Jeff Hardy, who was on a massive losing streak, while still holding the NXT Championship.

What occurred is one of the worst booking decisions in recent memory. Kross didn't just eat a loss on his debut. He was crushed in one minute and forty seconds by an aging legend for absolutely no good reason, killing Kross's credibility and also damaging NXT's dwindling reputation. At a time when the black and gold had already suffered two years of embarrassing defeat to AEW Dynamite in the ratings war, how could fans treat NXT as a serious entity when its world champion was squashed in this manner?