Grayson Waller says WWE kept telling him to be serious while booking him in an act that gave him no way to do it.
Waller, now the NXT Champion, went back over his main roster run on Busted Open. He said the note he got was consistent and that the assignment worked against it.
“My advice was always, ‘We want you to be serious. We need you to be serious.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, let me be serious.’ ‘You’re with the New Day.’ Great,” Waller said.
He was careful to separate the booking from the people.
“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 them, so I never want people to think I’m derogatory towards them at all,” he said. “What a chance to work with one of the best tag teams of all time.”
The problem, as he described it, was the register.
“But we’re out there wearing silly hats. We’re mucking around and joking. I can’t be serious. I can’t show them what they want to see. I never got a chance to show them who I am,” Waller said.
He did not put it on anyone.
“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 how the business works. Sometimes, the ships sail a different way,” he said.
Waller also pointed to his talk show segment as an example of a format that no longer fits how WWE presents itself, saying the company now looks like a sports broadcast and that a silly Australian telling jokes before getting punched may not be the television it wants. He added that he does not think the company knew who he was.
Waller aligned with Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods in July 2025, after his tag team with Austin Theory was broken up and with Woods sidelined by injury. He was never formally a member of the group but wrestled alongside Kingston, including a tag title challenge. The trio ended when Kingston and Woods left WWE in May.
He returned to NXT on the July 28 episode with a promo calling the previous two years of his career embarrassing and referring directly to the hats and the comedy segments. In the same promo he called Cruz Montana, the former Santana, a shiny new toy who would be irrelevant within weeks. Zilla Fatu then interrupted the number one contender’s match between the two of them on August 11, and NXT General Manager Robert Stone put all three into the title match at Heatwave the following week.
He beat Tony D’Angelo in that fatal four-way at Heatwave on August 30 at Bert Ogden Arena in Edinburg, Texas, to win the NXT Championship. It is his first singles title in WWE.
He won it the way the character always worked. Waller pulled the referee out of the ring to stop Fatu pinning D’Angelo, then came off the top with an elbow that put Fatu through the announce table. With D’Angelo and Montana left in the ring, Montana went for Spin the Block, missed and took a spear, and Waller ran back in, threw Montana to the floor and covered D’Angelo. Tommy Dreamer named the match on Busted Open as a candidate for match of the year.
The title is the one thing NXT never gave him the first time. Waller started his WWE career on the brand and won the 2022 Men’s Iron Survivor Challenge without ever holding the championship. He was a WWE Tag Team Champion with Theory on the main roster.
Waller said the move back gave him what the main roster run did not. “Now in NXT, I’m getting to show them who I am. I am serious,” he said, per Fightful’s transcription. “This isn’t a joke to me. This means something.”
Kingston and Woods, the latter now working as Austin Creed, debuted in AEW as New Level at All In: London and won the AEW World Trios Championship with Swerve Strickland.
