Grayson Waller: Talk from John Cena ‘changed everything for me’
Some words from John Cena helped Grayson Waller change how he approaches his WWE career.
On a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Waller was asked what he thinks it will take for him to become a singles champion in WWE. Waller said, whenever he does get an opportunity like that, he’s going to run with it. But he believes the WWE roster is stacked right now and the best approach for him is to exercise patience while making the most of every chance he gets.
“I think some people fumble the bag stressing about that time period where you’re kind of sitting and waiting,” Waller said. “At the end of the day, like, we get paid to travel the world and do these cool things. I think my perspective has changed a lot.”
A locker room talk from Cena contributed to that change in perspective, with Cena reinforcing how valuable even short promos and dark matches can be.
“Maybe two years ago, I was kind of freshly on SmackDown. He did a little, kind of like a locker room thing. We had a little meeting. We had to talk about some stuff,” Waller said. “He got up and he said something that really stuck with me, where he talked about like, you know, 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. It’s like — you get to. Like, you get to, three minutes, 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. I’m like, who are we to complain about — I have mates at home who would, like, literally give everything in their life to wrestle before Raw. Who am I to go, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to wrestle.’ Like, 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 ‘get to.’ 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 reshare 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.”
Following the breakup of his tag team with Austin Theory, Waller is part of a trio on Raw with New Day’s Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods. Waller told Van Vliet that one goal he does have is to wrestle on a WWE PLE in his home country of Australia.
When asked about dream opponents he’d like to wrestle one-on-one at some point, Waller said he wants to face CM Punk “so bad.”
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.