“Same Energy.”
With a two-word tweet, Australian WWE star Grayson Waller explained it all – his rise, his inspiration and what has been stopping him time after time.
A day after finally making it onto the biggest wrestling company in the world’s main roster, joining Smackdown, Waller sat at home in Florida donning a T-shirt featuring a famous photo of NFL legend Tom Brady.
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It was Brady, looking slim and rather unimpressive, at the 2000 NFL Draft Combine – not long before he would be repeatedly snubbed.
Brady, the eventual seven-time Super Bowl champion and widely considered the sport’s GOAT, was taken with the 199th pick. Six quarterbacks were taken before him.
Waller knew how he felt. He’d been invited to sit through both nights of WWE’s most recent Draft, televised across Smackdown and then Raw, as the two brands selected their rosters from the entire pool of talent both at the top level and in the developmental NXT brand.
A handful of NXT wrestlers were called up. But Waller sat there, waiting to hear his name, across five full hours of television – despite being arguably one of the most talented, and certainly the most ready-made, among the group.
Eventually he got the call-up; but not during the TV broadcast. He wasn’t deemed important enough for that. His selection was announced online, to a much smaller audience, instead.
And, in his mind, it was his Tom Brady moment.
“I’m not gonna lie, it was tough,” the Sydney-sider told Foxsports.com.au.
“You know, I sat there on the Friday night for you know, four or five hours or however long it was. I saw name after name and Grayson Waller’s name wasn’t picked.
“And you know, not everyone was there. Not everyone was there. I got asked to be there. So I expected to be drafted. And when I wasn’t, I was frustrated. And I had to sit that whole weekend and think about how low I felt.
“And then I turn up that Monday and the same thing happens. I watched the entire episode of Raw and I’m hearing these names picked – and there’s some really talented people in NXT who got drafted, but I’m Grayson Waller. I’m the number one person here. My name should be drafted on television.
“So I was frustrated, and I really thought that I was gonna sit there for two nights and not get picked – and I thought about Tom Brady, and I thought about that, if you watch the documentary, The Brady Six about the six quarterbacks that got picked before Tom – and I know every single person drafted before me. I know every NXT person that was drafted before me.
“And when my name was called last, I wasn’t elated. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t crying like everyone else. They’re all just happy to get drafted. That’s their goal achieved, they’re done now.
“This is just the beginning. I took umbrage with the fact that I was picked last. I took umbrage to the fact that it wasn’t on television. And I don’t think that’s the wrong thing, I think for me, that’s when I operate at my best – and I think when you saw when I talked afterwards, that was who I am, I was being real, I hold myself to a different standard.
“I’m not like everyone else in NXT who’s just happy to be in the Performance Center, or happy to be on Raw now. I see myself as one of the best and I operate best with a chip on my shoulder, so I put a whole bag of chips on my shoulder that night.
“I feel Smackdown got the number one pick with the last pick. This is going to go down five years from now – when you think about draft moments, there’s so many cool draft moments. I think Grayson Waller getting picked last will be a moment because I’ll be at this stage, and everyone’ll look back and go wow, how did he get picked so late?”
Waller’s frustration was both evident and understandable given what he has shown through his relatively short pro wrestling career.
While many grapplers start in their teenage years, Waller went through his early adulthood simply dreaming of and enjoying wrestling, rather than getting involved.
He travelled the world and got a degree; he became a history teacher at an all-boys’ school in Sydney. His pet subjects were Greek and Roman history – “anything with weapons or fighting”.
“And then I got to a stage in my life where I was like, I don’t want to be the person who looks back and goes, I could’ve been so good at that if I tried,” he said.
“So I kind of, at 25 was like – I have to do it now. And thankfully I did, because it’s worked out really, really well. But it was something I always wanted to do.
“(And) I think those things kind of gave me a head start when I did start, because I knew about wrestling so much, I went and did MMA so I had a bit of a base fighting background, which I think once I started, I was ready to go – where a lot of people start, and it takes them years to kind of get to the levels they want to be at, I kind of skyrocketed a little bit.”
But Waller took the leap into the squared circle, training with Sydney’s PWA under nternationally renowned stars Robbie and Madison Eagles, working in the Australian independent wrestling “bubble”.
Then came the breakthrough from an unlikely source – reality TV.
Australian Survivor fans may remember Matty, the cocky, athletic, blonde-haired member of the Contenders tribe in 2019’s Champions vs Contenders season – who made his mark with wrestling-style promos after strong challenge performances.
One saw AFL commentator Abbey Holmes call him “an actual idiot” – but that was kind of the point.
The wrestling cliche is the best characters are you turned up to 11; on Survivor Waller was turned up to an 8 or 9, and it helped him stand out.
“I was very smart about that, because I got to a stage of Australian wrestling where – you’ve been around the scene – it’s hard to actually get your name out on a level outside that indie wrestling bubble. There’s like a bubble. And it’s impossible to escape,” he explained.
“So I looked around and like, I love reality TV, and managed to find my way onto Survivor. And I think that just opened some eyes, and I went into that show being like, I want to be Grayson on this show. I don’t want to go in there and just be this boring person, I want to be Grayson. And I think I was largely.
“The problem was I had no food and was sitting in the cold all the time, so energy levels were lacking, whereas if I think if I’m got like a Love Island, or one of those stupid shows, you would have seen the full Grayson.
“But just having that TV experience, being behind the camera, and being able to talk and those type of things, I think that benefited me hugely. And obviously as well, it got enough eyes on me that a lot of people started paying attention who weren’t before.”
Waller’s career took a leap forwards post-Survivor, earning him more bookings around Australia and better positions on the card, before WWE showed interest and signed him to a deal in 2021.
Given his skills he was quickly given a shot on TV, on the revamped NXT brand which was focusing on younger wrestlers – rather than the ‘best of the independents’ vibe fostered under Triple H for many years.
That revamp worked in Waller’s favour, because he was a fresh face, but also clearly more talented and ready for TV than many of the younger, less experienced wrestlers in WWE’s cavernous Performance Center training base.
Of course, not every wrestling fan saw his quick surge up the ladder things that way.
“For a long time, there was all negative energy about Grayson Waller,” he explained.
“I will never forget being put in War Games (a special cage match on a major show) and seeing comment after comment of like, who is this? Why is he in it?
“I was in the cage, like the little cage (on the stage) waiting to go in at War Games, and the crowd was chanting at me ‘who are you?’ And like, I’ll never forget that feeling. That’s something that I’m going to put in my heart. And every single time I go out to wrestle, I think about that.
“Because now people are jumping on the bandwagon going, ‘Oh, we love Grayson’, I hate that. Where was that energy when I started? I didn’t get good. I was always this good. People just didn’t give me the opportunity.
“So other people’s thoughts don’t validate me. My bosses, the important people, the coaches at the PC, the producers here, the top wrestlers here, their opinions and their thoughts will validate me. Flops on Twitter who don’t know anything, who’ve never done a push up and have no idea about what wrestling really is. They don’t validate me at all.”
Yet he continued to prove himself and earn greater opportunities. He attacked the beloved Johnny Gargano on the latter’s apparent exit from WWE – a feud renewed with a spectacular unsanctioned match at NXT’s WrestleMania weekend show this past April – along with battling former world champion AJ Styles, winning a feud with main roster member LA Knight, and challenging multiple times for the NXT Championship.
Waller even feuded with the legendary Shawn Michaels, the on-screen NXT authority figure and off-screen booker, who rarely makes appearances these days – showing how highly Michaels and the WWE higher-ups rate the Aussie.
“No one in recent years can say that they were in the ring with Shawn Michaels. Even though it wasn’t in a wrestling capacity, like I wanted, like, that’s one of the greatest of all time and I was in there. And that doesn’t happen. So that was very big for me,” Waller said.
“But also, WrestleMania weekend in the Staples Center – that’s Kobe Bryant’s house. That was wild for me. And I took umbrage with the fact that I wasn’t the main event. I was upset about it. And I went out there to, to prove people wrong, I wanted to go out there and go, ‘I’m the best in NXT, hands down’.
“And I think that match against Johnny, it sucked. It hurt a lot. I was in a lot of pain for a lot of days. But people left that NXT show talking about Grayson Waller, people left WrestleMania weekend talking about Grayson Waller. And when you look at how talented the NXT roster is, and how many good people there are, I took a lot of a lot of pride out of people talking about me.”
Now Waller enters a new phase of his career on Smackdown, in front of the biggest weekly audience he’s ever had, and with the biggest opportunities.
The aforementioned AJ Styles, a living legend of the wrestling industry, looms as his next rival as he’s set to appear on Waller’s in-world ‘talk show’, The Grayson Waller Effect.
Waller concedes Styles was the number one wrestler on the list of guys he was keen to work with when he signed with WWE.
“When I was a teenager, AJ Styles was my favourite wrestler. I got the opportunity to see him on a tour in Sydney when I was probably like 14-15. So I was always a big AJ fan,” Waller said.
“So he was always number one, and the fact that got to do it in NXT (feud with him) was wild. But that night was so important to me – because I feel like I didn’t just hang in there with him. It wasn’t a situation where like, ‘oh, wow, he hung with him’. I think I went in there, and I competed against him. And I kind of showed who I was.
“But I lost. So at the end of the day, I can’t take anything positive from it, because I lost – and that’s something that I’ve thought about a lot.
“And now he’s gonna be on my talk show this week, you know, Saturday morning on Binge on Smackdown. And I think that’s the biggest name you could possibly get.
“And I need that rematch, lad. I need that so bad. I hate losing. I hate losing so much. And I hate the fact that he can say he beat me. So I need to change that.”
Waller should get that chance.
And, based on how he typically goes when he gets a chance, he should get what he wants.
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