Bronson Reed’s NXT North American Championship win was a massive moment for not only him, but also for his family and home country.
The new champion spoke with PWInsider to discuss just how important his win was for his home country of Australia following his ‘colossal’ title victory over now former champion Johnny Gargano inside of a Steel Cage during last week’s edition of WWE NXT.
“I think it’s a very pivotal moment in the wrestling business for Australia. I think for a long time Australia sort of got put on the back burner. People recognized the talent from the UK, Japan, Mexico, and of course here in the USA, but forgot about the rich history of Australian wrestling and the fact that we have a lot of untapped potential and talent in our country. And as a child growing up, watching wrestling, there really wasn’t any representation of my country or fellow countrymen doing things. So the fact that myself, Rhea, and Indi are now all champions, I hope that that not only inspires the talent back home, those guys that are grinding, to hopefully get to somewhere like a platform like NXT, but also kids back home that one day might want to become a professional wrestler or have dreams of being a WWE that they can go, “Hey, look, they’re from Australia, they’re doing it. Maybe I can do it too.”
Reed hasn’t been able to travel home recently due to COVID-19 restrictions but noted that he’s heard from several friends and family from his home country.
“I definitely have. So my phone was blowing up, obviously, after last Tuesday, I was able to speak to my family back home, my mother, my sister, my stepdad, and they were all over the moon for me. But also it went into the local paper that everyone sort of reads. My family was bombarded with people being like, “Did you see the paper? Did you see the news?” I had my grandparents and uncle who are big wrestling fans that sort of got me into the business, they were watching live back home, which is at midday for them, so they were watching live and they got to see me become champion. And that, again, is just something special that not only did I at one point not think happened, but I’m sure family members maybe thought it was a bit of a far-fetched dream coming from such a small down in Australia to get to where we are, but not just me as champion, there’s also Rhea Ripley. We’re both from Adelaide and I couldn’t imagine that as a teenager, that there’d be two people from Adelaide as WWE champions.”
