If you ask around the WWE locker room, you’ll likely hear a pretty surprising take about Logan Paul — not that he doesn’t belong in the ring, but that he’s too good at being there.
And according to WWE Raw star Grayson Waller, that level of commitment has officially “ruined” celebrity wrestling for everyone else.
Waller broke down his reasoning during an appearance on the Battleground Podcast, explaining that the problem isn’t that celebrities are stepping into the ring. It’s that Paul changed the standard in a way most newcomers can’t meet.
“I think Logan Paul ruined celebrity wrestling because he was so good at it and put in so much effort that any celebrity coming in after we compare them to [him],” Waller said. To him, once Paul raised the bar, there was no going back to half-hearted cameos or casual stunt appearances.
Waller pointed to WWE’s NIL pipeline — where college athletes with massive social followings sometimes enter the company — as an example of how messy expectations have become.
“They want to come in, they want to go straight to the main roster. They want to straight away do big matches at WrestleMania,” he said. “It’s like no, no, no, you have to understand Logan did that because he’s a special breed; he’s a special athlete.”
He contrasted that with celebrities who put in real work behind the scenes. Waller specifically shouted out Jelly Roll for taking the craft seriously during his NXT involvement. “Everything I’ve heard about Jelly Roll from the NXT guys who worked with him, he was there every day. He was there for hours,” Waller explained. “He was doing everything that we do.”
Waller made it clear he has no issue with celebrities entering WWE — as long as they’re willing to grind like the full-time roster. “If someone’s willing to put themselves through what we went through, I got no problem with them being in the business,” he said. “But if they just want to come in and get a cheap payday, they’re going to disappear real quick.”
Paul’s impact comes with receipts. Before his WrestleMania 38 debut, he trained extensively with WWE producer Shane “Hurricane” Helms, and later working with Shawn Michaels, ahead of his first world title match.
Since then, he’s held the WWE United States Championship and picked up WrestleMania wins over AJ Styles, Randy Orton, and Kevin Owens.