Grayson Waller says WWE kept asking him to show a more serious side of himself, but there was one problem—he didn’t feel like the television he was given actually allowed him to do it.
While speaking on Busted Open After Dark, Bully Ray asked Waller why The Grayson Waller Effect eventually disappeared and why Waller started fading from prominence after WWE had once trusted him with his own talking segment. Waller actually understands why the talk-show concept may not fit what WWE is trying to look like these days.
“So I understand that maybe the talk shows aren’t there for, you know, with what we’re doing now, realism is a real thing. We look like a sports show now. There’s very—there’s less differences now between WWE and NFL and NBA. You see how we get to the arenas. This is a professional sport that we’re doing, and that’s how it needs to be presented.”
In that kind of presentation, Waller can see why his old routine might feel a little out of place. As he put it, WWE may simply not want a “silly Australian” cracking jokes before somebody punches him in the face anymore.
“A talk show where some silly Australian comes out and says some jokes and gets punched in the face might not be the type of television that they wanna present. And I understand that.”
Waller’s bigger issue was what happened after that. He says WWE repeatedly told him that they wanted to see him become more serious. Waller was completely willing to give them that version of himself.
“My advice was always, ‘We want you to be serious. We need you to be serious.’ I’m like, ‘Yes. Let me be serious.’”
Then he got paired up with The New Day. Waller made it very clear that he has nothing but respect for Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, and he considered working alongside them a huge opportunity.
“‘You are with The New Day.’ Oh, great. I love The New Day. I can’t explain how much those guys did for me. I got all the respect in the world for ’em. So I never want people to think I’m being derogatory towards them at all. Like, what a chance to, like, work with the best tag—one of the best tag teams, I know Bully will yell at me otherwise—of all time.”
The problem wasn’t The New Day. It was what Waller was being asked to do with them. After being told WWE wanted him to get serious, Waller found himself wearing goofy hats, joking around and leaning into comedy. That left him wondering how he was supposed to show WWE the exact thing they kept asking him for.
“But we’re out there wearing silly hats. We’re mucking around, we’re joking. I can’t be serious. I can’t show them what they wanna see.”
For Waller, that became the frustrating part of his main-roster run. He felt like WWE wanted something more from him without ever really getting the chance to see it: “I never got a chance to show them who I am.”
Grayson Waller sees it more as a situation where neither side quite gave the other what they were looking for, and sometimes that’s simply how wrestling works.
“And no one is in the wrong. I didn’t do the wrong thing. They didn’t do the wrong thing. They didn’t see what they want. I didn’t give them what they want. That’s just realistically how the business works. Sometimes the sail—the ships sailed a different way.”
That’s also why this latest NXT run means so much to him. Waller finally feels like he’s getting to show WWE the serious version they asked for in the first place, and he believes people who had already made up their minds about him might start looking at him differently.
“But now that I was in NXT, now I’m getting to show ’em who I am. I am serious. Like, this isn’t a joke to me. Like, this means something. And I think this will open a lot of people’s eyes who didn’t have ’em open before.”
Waller spent plenty of time being the guy who could talk, joke and annoy everyone in the building. His NXT run is giving him a chance to find out what happens when the jokes stop—and whether WWE sees something different this time.
Do you think WWE’s New Day program prevented Grayson Waller from showing the serious side they wanted from him? Let us know in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
