Grayson Waller’s NXT Championship win meant a lot more to him than anyone watching probably realized. Before his recent turnaround, Waller says he had reached a point in WWE where he thought he was simply waiting for his release papers.
While speaking on Busted Open After Dark, Bully Ray asked Waller to compare winning the WWE Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania with finally becoming NXT Champion. Waller admitted WrestleMania was the obvious childhood dream, especially for someone who grew up all the way in Australia.
“Winning the title at WrestleMania was like—that’s the childhood dream. That’s the one, like, you could retire the next day and you can say, ‘Hey, I’ve done that.’ Especially being from Australia, even getting a chance to be on WrestleMania and being there with Theory, who I tagged with for a long time, and holding those titles, that meant a lot.”
The NXT Championship was different. Waller had already made the main roster, won gold at WrestleMania and experienced plenty of big moments by the time he came back to NXT. But personally, he felt like he was coming back from the lowest point of his WWE career.
“But that was when I was here. I was on the come-up. Sunday night at Heatwave, like, that was from—I was from the basement. I was from the depths. So, like, winning this championship meant so much more personally.”
There was also some unfinished business waiting for him in NXT. Waller wanted that championship badly during his original run and never got it. He knows people can look at an NXT title as being below a main-roster championship, but that doesn’t really matter to him.
“And I can understand where people would look at it different. That’s a tag title on the main roster. This is a developmental title, as some people like to say. But for me, this means so much more. Like, I was in NXT and I always wanted this and I never got it.”
Waller certainly had enough chances to chase it. He went through a list of names he faced for the championship during his time in NXT, and every one of those attempts ended the same way.
“And I fought so hard and I wrestled Bron and I wrestled Trick and I wrestled Melo and I wrestled Oba. I wrestled all these guys for the title. I never got it.”
Not having those accolades eventually started bothering Waller on the main roster too. For all the confidence he showed on television, Waller felt people didn’t really take him seriously because he didn’t have enough championships behind the talk.
“And I think a large part of that on the main roster is why people didn’t look at me seriously. They didn’t take me seriously because I didn’t have the accolades.”
Then Waller revealed just how bad things had started feeling before this NXT run. He wasn’t sitting around thinking another championship was eventually coming. Waller thought that opportunity had already passed him by and that the next thing WWE might hand him was his release.
“And, like, winning that on Sunday—it doesn’t matter what the crowd thought. None of that matters. That was personally the biggest moment of my career. That meant so much because there were times when I never thought that this was gonna be a possibility anymore. I thought the ship had sailed. I thought I was waiting for my papers.”
Waller has spent years making sure everyone hears about how good he thinks he is. This time, getting the NXT Championship apparently meant something very different—he went from wondering whether WWE was finished with him to finally getting the accomplishment he had been chasing since his first run on the brand.
Do you think becoming NXT Champion can completely turn Grayson Waller’s WWE career around? Let us know in the comments.
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