The Sunrise Incident: Grayson Waller Comes Close to Blows with TV Staff
In an effort to advertise for their upcoming Elimination Chamber event in Perth, WWE sent two of their talents — hero of the people, LA Knight, and Australian native, Grayson Waller — to conduct media in the land down under. This trip entailed a small sit-down interview with popular Australian morning show, Sunrise. The interview started mostly calmly with both men speaking a little on what they do and the upcoming show, but the segment ended in somewhat of an awkward fashion.
As the interview came to a close, host Natalie Barr asked if either of them would be able to show them one of their “finishing moves”. Both Waller and Knight seemed taken aback by the question, and when Knight asked if she was asking to receive one, she instead nervously gestured towards the studio’s floor manager. The staff member entered the shot in a mock fighting stance, and this seemed to aggravate Waller. The trained wrestler got to his feet and began reprimanding the man for even trying to talk to him, all the while Sunrise’s media team played John Cena’s theme music in the background. He took offence to the Sunrise crew treating his profession like a joke and threatened to punch the man in the jaw.
Eventually, the scuffle was awkwardly broken up and the segment came to a close, but things certainly hadn’t gone the way anyone had expected.
It’s hard to properly gage how much of this was in character and how much is genuine. Waller plays a very arrogant heel persona on TV, so it’s natural he would bring an air of that to an interview like this, but it’s also very understandable why someone in the industry would find this sort of treatment disrespectful or demeaning. It takes a lot of hard work and training to perform wrestling moves, so to treat them like a parlour trick or like something anyone can just do is a massive insult to a professional wrestler.
We may never know the full truth of the matter, but one thing is for sure: it made for some very interesting television.
