Grayson Waller: Influencer boxing is a great example of ‘bad heat’

Grayson Waller isn’t a fan of how social media influencers mimic WWE tactics to promote their boxing fights.

While appearing on the Battleground Podcast, Waller — a WWE heel who mostly stays in character while doing interviews — was asked if he believes just getting any kind of reaction is good or if he feels there is a bad type of heat. Waller pointed to influencer boxing as an example of negative heat, feeling the competitors take things too far and are being fake in an attempt to sell fights.

“I wouldn’t say I necessarily think about it, but I do think you do see now — especially because I think wrestling has become everything. I think you watch almost any sport, and I think influencer boxing is a great example of what I would say is bad heat,” Waller said. “Every influencer boxing, if you ever see those social media guys, they [take] things way too far. They’re always pretending to fight each other. Like, you can just feel how fake it is the whole time.

“With me, I’m just being realistic. When I say these things about people — when I say things about Penta or people in the crowd — I mean it. It’s just me being allowed to say whatever I want, which is fun. But I do think there is definitely a line where it goes from entertaining to something different. And with the WWE, that’s not something that we do. But I see a lot of people try and mimic what we do in other arenas, other sports. And they can’t do what we do. We’re very good at what we do. Of like making sure, you know, at the end of the day, we’ve got families coming to the show. So we got to make sure we’re having fun with it and the fans are having fun. Well, I don’t really care if the fans are having fun, but my boss is going to be upset if they’re not. So, you know, you kind of got to think about those things.”

Influencer boxing has become a big trend ever since the Paul brothers and KSI had success with it. Waller did not criticize any boxers by name during the Battleground Podcast appearance — and he spoke highly of how well Logan Paul has done in pro wrestling.

“He genuinely cares about what we do and he’s very passionate,” Waller said about Paul. “He genuinely cares, and he’s very good at it.”

Waller is a member of the Raw roster in WWE, aligned with Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods as a trio after his old tag team with Austin Theory split up.