Grayson Waller On Austin Theory, Getting JACKED, New Day, Roasting Fans, CM Punk
Grayson Waller (@GraysonWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Anaheim, CA to discuss WWE's recent trip to Australia and not being a part of the Crown Jewel card, the rise of Australian wrestlers, ending his alliance with Austin Theory and A-Town Down, teaming with The New Day, what he really thinks of the Canadian Destroyer, upsetting Taylor Swift fans, recently debuting a new finisher, who his WWE dream match is, and more!
On which Australian stereotypes are true:
"Most of them, to be honest. Because obviously we were just in Perth for the last week, and it was good, because we got to be there [for a week]. Usually we're in and out. Like today, got here last night, 11 o'clock. I leave tonight, 11 o'clock. I don't see any Anaheim, no Disneyland, no Mighty Duck store. That gorgeous smog. It's beautiful. Who doesn't love California? I think everyone got to spend a whole week [in Australia], and it's like, Australia is what it is. We're a bunch of fun, silly bogans who like to go and have a good time, even Bron Beakker, who for years has relentlessly mocked Australia, [sayiing] 'It's mud huts and it's lions and tigers...' showing his understanding of culturals outside of America, said he loved Australia, and it's his favorite place that he's traveled so far. So that makes me happy."
On wanting to wrestle a WWE PLE match in Australia:
"That’s 100% my goal. That was my goal this year. And unfortunately, it didn't get to happen, which is obviously disappointing, but I got to perform twice in front of my home crowd. I've been dialed in for six months. This is what all my focus was on getting on these shows. I told them, I don't care how, put me out in front of that crowd, and that match against Fenix that I had before the show on SmackDown, that's my most memorable match I've ever had. I know we've done WrestleMania, we've done all those which was so good, but for me, that was the one that got me. Because when I came out, you don't know the reaction you're going to get in all these different cities. Fenix went out and they love Fenix. He wears a mask, and now WWE fans love idiots in masks, like The Lucha Losers are super over, which sucks. But then when I went out, and the reaction I got, and then they're booing Fenix. We're on Main Event, we're before the show, usually this isn't the big stuff. So when they chant my name and that type of stuff like that meant a lot, because I always rep Australia, that's what I'm really proud of, and to get that energy back from the crowd, that was my favorite match I've had."
On being cheered by the fans:
"I enjoyed it, because these are my people. I don't represent the fans anywhere else. I represent my fans. There were a lot of people who said they saw me on the Indies, you know, like, calling me Matty Wahlberg. 'Oh, we saw you at this RSL Club. We love what you do for Australia.' So it was nice, because they're my people. I represent them. So I think even though they know I'm an idiot, I'm their idiot. And they got behind me that night, and for one time only, I was like, I get it, and they bring you presents and stuff, maybe being a good guys is ok. I understand what it means now. Now I know why Cody fakes it for so long, they bring you all these fun gifts and things like that. Some guy brought me a Jordan Mailata Eagles jersey, a real one, not even a fake Chinese one. So I was like, oh, man, I need to pretend to be a good good guy for a while."
On Australian wrestlers being rare 20 years ago:
"Nathan Jones, he was good. Superstar. Fell over at WrestleMania. That’s who we had for a long time. Nathan Jones getting taken out of WrestleMania. That was our hero."
On the influx of Australian talent:
"I think from what I've heard, that level of talent was always there, but people hadn't seen them. You couldn't see them because they're so far away, but the talent was there, and it took Tenille and TM61 and Buddy and all those, Rhea, obviously taking it to another level, getting those chances and doing really well. Oh wow, those Aussies are [great], let's try another one. Bang, bang. I think everyone who's come to WWE, especially as an Australian, has done extremely well. Our hit rate is 100% If we were baseball players, we're home run after home run. Now I think what we've done is we've opened the door for more to come in. Speaking to Rhea and speaking to Bronson, that's what we want to do. We have a lot of Aussies who will come over and stay with us, and then we help them out. Hey, stay in my house. I bought a house specifically with extra rooms, so when the boys from home come over, they stay in that room. I'll take care of everything. Food's taken care of, everything's taken care of. You guys just go wrestle and train and gym and work as hard as you can, and I'll open the door and hopefully you take advantage of it. And there are a lot of guys doing that right now, and I'm so excited for you and other fans to see these guys come up. There's two guys in Australia called The Dropouts, who came and stayed for six weeks. They worked their ass off harder than I've seen anyone, and they have this, they call it the Australian yeet. I hate Yeet, so I don't like putting it over, but they do the Chelsea Dagger song. In Perth, Otis came, and Bayley came. And when they did their entrance, Bayley’s like, 'Oh my God, Who are these guys?' And then on her match on Raw, she did the [Chelsea Dagger], which was awesome. So there's these guys who, I think, once they get given a chance in the US, they're going to take over and they're going to get signed immediately."
On whether he thought he would always make it to WWE:
"To be honest, no. I just loved wrestling. I loved Friday and Saturday, going out with the boys and chatting backstage and doing these matches, it was fun. I loved wrestling, and I obviously had goals. My goal was to just do an indie in America, because I used to watch American indie wrestling. I was like, that'd be sick. I remember King of Trios, and Chikara was one I used to love. I was like, if I get to do King of Trios, man, that's a dream made. So this didn't seem like a potential; there was no chance of it happening. Whereas now, I think the guys and the girls in Australia see the road, it's like, oh my god, it's possible. And even talking to a bunch of fans in Australia, they go, 'Hey, I really want to start training. Where should I train?' They can see there's an opportunity there. They can make it happen, which is really, really cool that, I think myself, Rhea and Bronson and obviously Kyle Fletcher two are showing these Aussies hey, this is 100% possible for you to achieve."
On future goals:
"I think the WWE roster right now is the most stacked it's ever been. I'm on Raw. You got Punk, you got The Usos, you got LA Knight, now you got Bron and Bronson. You got Roman when he comes around. That's not even taking into account, AJ, Dom Mysterio, Penta’s here now. It's so stacked. So the guys you're competing with now are the top of the top. So they're the kind of guys that I'm trying to take on. So obviously, right now, I'm doing some stuff with The New Day, which is super fun, best tag team of all time, but I know I'm just going to get in the best shape I can. Every time I get an opportunity, I'm going to show out. I'm going to do whatever it takes when the opportunity is there, I'm going to steal it, I'm going to take it, I'm going to run with it, but I just got to wait for that chance and it's coming. It's all about patience. Sometimes you get in your head and you're like, maybe I wasn't on Raw today. Oh man, they don't like me, I suck, whatever it is, and that's not what it is. It's just like, it's not your chance tonight, dude. Your chance is coming and you just got to wait. I think some people fumble the bag stressing about that time period where you kind of sit and wait. But the end of the day, we get paid to travel well and do these cool things. I think my perspective has changed a lot. There was actually, would you like me to put over John Cena for a moment? I hate saying nice things about John. Maybe two years ago, where I was kind of freshly on SmackDown, he did a locker room thing. We had a little meeting. We had to talk about some stuff. He got up and he said something that really stuck with me, where he talked about, 'You don't have to do the Netflix break promo. You don't have to wrestle before the show, you don't have to do the dark match, you get to.' It's like, you get three minutes to say whatever you want on Netflix. You get to wrestle before the show when they're the hottest, when they're the most excited, and you get to wrestle another great Superstar. And when he said that, it changed my perspective a little bit. Who are we to complain about it? I have mates at home who would literally give everything in their life to wrestle before Raw. Who am I to go, oh man, I gotta wrestle, I hated that I even possibly thought those things. So once he said that, that changed everything for me. And I look at everything as anything you give me, you give me 30 seconds backstage, I'm stealing that. I'm going to make sure people online are going to re-share the 30 seconds that I have. I'm going to make sure whatever moment I have is going to be something. That's the mindset I think you have to have."
On believing The New Day are better than The Hardys:
"They’re just falling off a ladder. That's so hard? I could do that. You know how many fail videos I've seen on YouTube of people, old people, falling off ladders? I've seen it happen before. I'm not impressed with the Hardys. I think The New Day would dog walk the Hardys."
You're not impressed with The Hardys?
"No, those young NXT prospects, The Hardy Boyz? You just fall off ladders. I'm not impressed by you. I think The New Day would walk all over those guys. So I know they're hanging down in NXT a little bit, but hopefully one day they get called up, and if they have the opportunity to get called up to the main roster, I think The New Day is gonna have a chat with them.
The best thing, I think about The New Day is you can give them anything, and they turn it into something huge, like they're so good at this mourning thing, because obviously mourning the death of the tag division. It's so sad that the tag division is dead on Monday Night Raw, little nail in the coffin. You got Dragon Lee and AJ Styles as champs now, that's cringe. That's really sad. That mourning thing, that's something that was a one time thing that they've now turned into months worth of television. And they have giant hats, which I now have proudly in my house. I have a giant Frankenstein for Halloween. He has a nice giant, whatever the hat Woods calls it. But they're just so talented doing that stuff and being a guy who was in a tag team for a long time, getting to work with them, it's a dream. They've been through everything that's ever happened. So I’m trying to learn all I can from them, because a lot of the vets in the locker room, they don't want to hand back down, they want to protect their spot. New Day are great guys. And Big E can't wrestle, so you get Big G."
So is A Town Down Under done?
"I’m not sure what that was."
Austin Theory?
"Theory? Oh yeah, he was the big idiot, the big jacked idiot. Yeah, I haven't seen him. That's kind of crazy. He's been gone for a long time, that's a good thing. I think that's a positive."
What if he comes back?
I'm good dude, that's if he comes back. I haven't heard from him. Have you heard from him? I got nothing to say about Austin Theory; that’s the past. I think it's sometimes things run their course, and you just got to move on and hang with The New Day now. That's a much more positive experience."
On upsetting Taylor Swift fans:
"That was a beautiful thing. And it was just like, it's funny what we do. We talk for an hour today. You don't know what the 10 seconds of this interview are that people are going to latch on to. And the same with any interview. I just made a joke on The Bump that if Travis Kelsey is happy settling for a six, good for him, which is funny. That's a great line. I was pretty happy with that, but I didn't even think about it until all of a sudden, I have these cringe mums on TikTok who don't spend time with their kids doing videos on me about how ugly I am. And they were saying some wild stuff, like Swifty fans are mean. There was one lady who was talking about how I had no lips. Never in my life have I thought about not having lips, and I'm looking at the mirror like, do I not have lips? They got my head a little bit. But I doubled down on it too, because I think people get stressed about when you annoy the fan base, especially the Swifties. But I doubled down on it because it was so fun. They were so angry and so upset. But there has been a part two to the story. So recently, George Kittle invited a few of us, it's called Tight End University in Nashville, and all the tight ends train together for a couple of days, and they do a few events. And he invited us to this party one night. So me, Bayley and Sheamus all went to Nashville. Went to the party, and then Swifty and Travis Kelsey were both there. Now in the back of my mind, she doesn’t know who I am, but I'm like, oh, man, imagine if at some stage they're scrolling through their phone and they've seen this idiot Australian has said a really rude thing. So I'm a bit like man, I'm gonna have to fight Travis Kelsey. And I've said multiple times, I'll fight Travis Kelsey. And then I see how big tight ends are and how big he was, I'm gonna win, but it's gonna be scrap. So I'm there with Sheamus and there's all these famous people up there. We met Theo Von. There's all the tight ends. Obviously, there's just all these well-known people. They all know Sheamus. Obviously, he's pale, so it's like, you get this bright light in the corner of your eye, like you're opening up the fridge. So it's kind of painful for a second. So they're all coming up and talking to him, and then Kelsey comes up. Here we go. And he was super nice, Cena-esque. I'll give him Cena-esque in the sense. He didn't have to come over and chat to us. Super chill. Chatted to us for a bit. I was like, 'Hey, man, Jason's done some stuff. When are we getting you coming in?' He's like football first type of thing. So he was really cool. Didn't get to meet Taylor officially. She did walk past me at some stage, and I had to move and go, oh, sorry. And she said, Thank you. So I think that's the reconciliation. A good sister, too. She was just up there. I guess in my head, I thought, Taylor Swift, she can have all this security around all this. She was just sinking beers with the boys, just hanging upstairs. I was like, she's good, good for her. There we go, reconciliation. I think the circle's done. The circle's finished. I was like, any, any girl who's that famous, who just sits drinking with the boys and then goes down and does a song on the fly, that’s good."
On his new finisher:
"My thing is I like taking moves that I see and then making them my own. So obviously, the rolling stunner I used to do. The Stunner is sick, but I do it this way. Elbow drop. I do it this way. So I'd seen someone do it standing, just standing in the middle of the ring. Now there's some big boys in WWE. I don't think I can do that to everyone. Some of those big boys like to try and get them. I think I'll probably hurt myself. So then I was like, what if I do it off the second [rope]? There's some freaks at NXT, who like trying wild stuff. So I went down and tried some stuff out. So I did it two years ago against Melo, I've been sitting on it, and it's one of those ones save it for a special occasion. That's what they always say. And then sometimes special occasions don't turn up. So I think Australia was the perfect place to do it. I actually wanted to use it on Penta so I needed a reversal to the Canadian destroyer. So I was like, Maybe I come up with an Australian destroyer. Not that that's the name, but I was like, I need something flippy, because it's disrespectful to make someone flip and land on their head. So I did it to his brother instead. Yeah, stupid Lucha flops."
On his Mexican Destroyer videos:
"For some reason I think people forget how dangerous that move is. Legitimately, because everyone does it. If you watch an indie show, they'll do it four or five times."
You took it off the top rope
"I got backstage, and some people weren't happy with me. They were like, don't do that. Someone pulled me aside and said, 'Don't ever do that again.' It was just like, I understand the risks involved, and obviously I don't want to take a move like that, but Penta is very good at what he does, but it's very dangerous and it's scary to be in that position. And I think sometimes we do so much wild stuff that sometimes we forget to put in perspective how wild that would be for someone off the street to be in that position, that high up, taking something like that. So that was a stressful thing. I think sometimes you go into, I don't want to say go into shock, because that seems super scary. But when that impact happens and it's like, Am I okay? Am I okay? You do legitimately check yourself. Am I okay? Do I feel okay? Obviously, adrenaline is a crazy thing too, so sometimes you don't feel stuff, and then a couple hours later you do. So it's like, sometimes it's a real, you say sell, but it's real. I'm like, Am I okay? Am I okay? And thank God I was."
On a future dream match:
"I've said it a few times now. I'm gonna keep saying it. Right now, I want Punk. I want Punk so bad, dude. Because, as I said, as a ROH guy, I've watched Punk for a long time. I love the stuff he did in Ring of Honor. I loved when he signed his WWE contract on the Ring of Honor Championship, that's so good. And when he came back, because I said some really mean things about Punk when he wasn't here. I remember I took a super kick from Jey Uso, and it was the day that Punk left his last job. I took a super kick, and I put a photo online of me icing my jaw with a Pepsi can, which was just like, sometimes I like to have fun online and cause some chaos. So when he was coming over here, I was like, This is gonna be fun. What Punk are we gonna get? And then we've got this real soft Punk. So I want to find out who the real Punk is."
Soft in what way?
"I'll give some examples. I go to NXT last year, and he's there with Fraxiom watching their match back, giving them some advice. And then Roxanne’s there and he's like, 'Hey, Waller, want to come watch this match?' What do you mean? He's really helpful backstage, and he's super nice and all this. I'm either gonna be really disappointed that he's softened, and this is the new Punk, and he's just a really nice guy now, or the real Punk is hiding in there, and I want to be the one to bring it out. That's what I want to do. Because it's like, I guess I was ready to fight him backstage. I thought that's what we were gonna do. I was like this is gonna be sick, like he's gonna start causing chaos, like he's gonna beat gonna beat up little flops backstage again, I'm in dude. But now he's just a really nice guy and very helpful to everyone, helps everyone at NXT and does all this. That's not the Punk that I love. I want to bring it back out, so I'm gonna get that opportunity. I've told him to his face, I'm like, there's gonna be a day where I'm gonna stand across from you with a microphone, and I'm gonna tell you exactly what I think about you, and I want you to tell me exactly what you think about me. And I think that magic, because I don't think we've seen NXT Waller on the main roster yet. I've had a lot of fun. I'm being very fun, but I don't think they've seen how mean I can be, how cruel I can be. When I really lock in on something, like, I'm a different breed, and I don't think I've been that recent. Just talking about it right now, I can feel it inside, that's what I need. If you want to see a different side of me, put me against that guy. I'll show you the real me."
What is Grayson Waller grateful for?
"My mates, my health and the hunger I have right now."
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