Grayson Waller made an appearance on After The Bell with Corey Graves to discuss a wide range of topics.
Why now is the time that he challenge for Bron Breakker’s NXT Championship at New Year’s Evil:
“I think I have so much talent that I don’t need a championship. If I wanted to wrestle for the NXT Championship, I could have done it already, but I didn’t need to. My face is everywhere and I’ve never been a champion here. I’ve got a talk show. I’m on RAW. I’m hanging out with reality stars. I’m literally all over the place and I’ve never held a championship. So I don’t necessarily agree that you have to have a championship to be someone. But now I’m at a stage where I want it because I want to take it from Bron.”
“As much as I want to be the champion to submit my legacy and show people who I am, I want to take the championship from him because I’m bored with Bron Breakker. I’m so sick of seeing it. Every advertisement is Bron Breakker. Every time there’s a poster, there’s his giant dog head right in the middle of it, and it’s like, I’m the star around here. Bron is an incredible wrestler. I’ll be straight up with you. He’s big, he’s strong, and the fact that he’s faster than me when he’s that size is like, wow, like, he’s a super athlete. But I’m a superstar and that’s the difference between us too. I think we’re going back on the road soon, you know, we’re doing that show in Charlotte in February, Vengeance Day. We need someone who’s going to lead this brand into the future and that’s Grayson Waller. It’s not Bron Breakker.”
How he made his way from New Zealand to NXT:
“I’m going out and making these things happen for myself because I’m not supposed to be the guy. I’m not supposed to be the guy wrestling Bron Breakker. I’m not second generation. I didn’t have a huge indie name. I was the biggest guy in Australia, but like the Australian indie scene hasn’t really translated over to here as much as it should. I didn’t finish seventh in the shot put in college. So like, I’m not the kind of guy that NXT wants.”
“So when I got here, I wasn’t supposed to be the person. I was just another guy that maybe will give him a chance. But I knew how talented I was. On these giant independents, I made my name by doing everything I could to make people talk about me. I went on Australian Survivor. I did that because I wanted people to know who I was. So I went on the reality show. I talked more trash than anyone ever has. I went out and did everything it takes to now people were talking about me. I got WWE‘s eyes on me. I made it happen. They didn’t come looking for me. I said, ‘Hey, I’m right here’, and I took that opportunity. When I came in, no one knew who I was. People at the Performance Center thought I was a reality guy. They didn’t even know that I’ve wrestled before. I think a lot of people still don’t know that I wrestled before I came here.”
“I didn’t need to rest on that. That didn’t need to be who I am. I think there’s so many people come here and they’re like, ‘Hey, I’m an indie guy. I did the Indies.’ Congrats, lad. There’s like thousands of indie wrestlers. No one is impressed by someone coming in and going, ‘I did Independents.’ The Australian scene has some incredible talent. Look at Rhea Ripley. You know, that’s someone that I met on the Independents. We have incredible talent who could take over any company they’re part of, but we don’t have eyes on it because we’re so far away. So it’s a thing where if you want people in America or the UK or Japan to notice you, you have to do something else. You have to find a way and I think that’s why I’m so good at what I do. I found a way to make sure people are paying attention to me and I went down the reality route because I wanted to be someone different. I didn’t want to be the guy that said, ‘I did the Indies for 15 years. I deserve an opportunity’, because that’s not how it works anymore.”
“If you see the PC, you have people coming in who are supreme athletes who walk in day one and are more athletic than anyone I’ve ever seen in an indie training school. It’s wild. It is like an insane place to be here. So you need to find a way to differentiate yourself and that’s what I did. But I was on the Indies for five years and I loved it. I had a full time job at the same time because there is absolutely no money in the Australian scene. You can’t be a full time wrestler. So I think that shows how much I love this too because I did this for fun basically, and was hoping maybe, hey, one day I’m gonna make this happen. So I think that shows that wrestling is in my blood.”
Quotes via WrestlingNews.co