CM Punk Responds To Grayson Waller Shoot Promo On WWE NXT

WWE

CM Punk has reacted to Grayson Waller’s WWE NXT return and promo that opened tonight’s episode of the show on the CW Network.

Other than matches on WWE Main Event, the last time Waller was seen on TV was a decisive loss against Oba Femi back in April.

Prior to that, he had spent a number of months aligned with New Day after his tag team with Austin Theory came to an end due to a hernia suffered by Theory.

This resulted in relatively consistent TV time for Waller, though it was in a background role, and of course both Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods both exited WWE after WrestleMania 42, leaving him on his own.

Waller had come up from NXT to the WWE main roster in 2023 with pretty decent fanfare, including a SmackDown main event against Edge at Madison Square Garden, which was Edge’s penultimate match before he left WWE.

He had also semi-regularly been hosting his Grayson Waller Effect talk show that was established in NXT, and perhaps most notably had an in-ring segment with John Cena at Money in the Bank 2023 in England.

In 2024, he and Austin Theory became WWE Tag Team Champions at WrestleMania 40, but since then, his career had somewhat stalled at a certain level despite his ability both in the ring and on the microphone, as well as getting into the best physical shape of his WWE run over the past few months.

That was until tonight’s NXT, when he appeared unannounced at the start of the show with a ‘shoot’ promo, where he basically recapped everything just mentioned and discussed how his career had been “dying,” while also noting the push that Theory has been getting on WWE Raw, referring to him as “240 pounds of dead weight,” an “idiot” and calling him a “Marty Jannetty” who’s “allergic to the microphone.”

He then went on to roast the WWE NXT men’s roster, pointing out that the women of NXT having been “running laps” around the men, and that there are only 10% of people in NXT who are main roster ready right now, all of that 10% are women.

That was how the show opened, and it concluded with a promo from new arrival Mike Santana, now known as Cruz Montana, who was interrupted by NXT Champion Tony D’Angelo before Waller stormed the ring and a three-way brawl broke out, essentially creating a brand new top level of the NXT men’s division made up of D’Angelo, Waller and Montana.

The promo from Waller caught the attention of a lot of fans, and even Undisputed WWE Champion CM Punk, who has been, and continues to be an advocate of Waller.

Punk reposted a clip of Waller’s promo on social media, adding the caption: “Frustration distilled and funneled into a bullet aimed at the competition.”

Punk also commented on WWE’s social media post of the clip with three clapping emojis in another public showing of praise for the 36 year old Australian who signed with WWE in 2021.

And Punk isn’t the only one, as Bayley – whose own WWE future has been questioned of late due to her positioning on the roster being lower than it should be, just like Waller’s – commented with three cheering emojis and also simply wrote “Grayson Waller” on Twitter in reaction to his promo.

Waller finally has a new lease on his career and got to remind everyone what he’s capable of, instead of being reduced to, as he said himself, a Netflix commercial comedy act.

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