Top 10 Australian WWE Wrestlers

The best Australian WWE Wrestlers have made their mark. With each passing year, it seems another great talent emerges from Oceania, and when they do, I’ll update my top 10.

The best WWE betting sites will offer wagers featuring some of these wrestlers, and for the big events, I’ll point you to the best bets. For now, I’ve listed and ranked the top wrestlers from Australia, starting with Rhea Ripley.

You can’t talk about women’s wrestling in 2023 without mentioning ‘Mami’ herself, Rhea Ripley.

After a notable career on the indies and NXT, Ripley debuted on the main roster in March of 2021. She soon went on to defeat Asuka for the Raw Women’s Championship at WrestleMania 37.  

After helping Edge defeat A.J. Styles at WrestleMania Backlash 2022, Edge invited Rhea to join his dark faction, The Judgement Day. Edge was soon ousted from the group, and the core group of Finn Bálor, Rhea Ripley, Dominik Mysterio, and Damian Priest was formed.

The Judgement Day has been one of the hottest acts in WWE since its inception, and much of the heat is generated from the on-screen romance between Ripley and “Dirty Dom” Mysterio (Ripley’s real-life fiancée, Buddy Murphy/Matthews, also appears on this list). While Damien Priest has claimed to be the leader of Judgement Day, Rhea is the de-facto face of the group.

The ability to generate revenue is the name of the game in wrestling, and Rhea is at the top of her game. She appears twice on the list of WWE’s top merchandise sellers in 2023, both as an individual and as a member of The Judgement Day; a feat that no other group member accomplished despite their overall popularity.

Toni Storm enjoyed an accomplished run before reaching WWE in 2017, with stints in high-level indies including Progress, EVE, and wXw.

Storm also had a notable run in Japan’s Stardom promotion, capturing the SWA World Championship and World of Stardom Championship, as well as winning the Cinderella and Five-Star GP Tournaments, respectively.

She didn’t stop there, as Storm was a semi-finalist in the inaugural WWE Mae Young Classic Tournament and went on to capture the NXT UK Women’s Championship. She requested and received a release from WWE in December of 2021, and in March of 2022 joined All Elite Wrestling.

As of this writing, “Timeless” Toni Storm is the undisputed face of the AEW women’s division, and is in the middle of a record-tying third reign as AEW Women’s World Champion.

Smackdown’s Grayson Waller is somewhat of a newcomer to WWE television, but has already cemented himself as one of the company’s next generation of microphone masters.

The charismatic Australian already has his own WWE talk show, The Grayson Waller Effect.

He’s also shown that he isn’t afraid of nuclear heat, as he once suggested that Travis Kelce had settled for Taylor Swift — AKA the unquestionable biggest star in the world. Swifties then bombarded Waller’s inbox with negative comments, and the spat garnered mainstream attention as well.

Waller even took a photo with Kelce’s mother, which only added fuel to the fire.

Travis getting all the attention, needed to give Mama Kelce the Grayson Waller Rub pic.twitter.com/IkVLLL86tz

— Grayson Waller (@GraysonWWE) October 8, 2023

The next entry on our list is one of the most dominant Australian wrestlers WWE has ever seen.

Born in Sydney and raised in Hawaii, Nia Jax is part of the prestigious Anoa’I wrestling dynasty that includes the Rock, Roman Reigns, The Usos, Rikishi, and many more.

She was the 2016 PWI Rookie of the Year and burst onto the main roster with high-profile feuds with Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss. “The Irresistible Force” has since won the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champion twice, and defeated Alexa Bliss at WrestleMania 34 to win the RAW Women’s Championship.

Jax’s imposing frame affords her a powerful move set that includes a Samoan drop, tilt-a-whirl backbreaker, and the bonsai drop made famous by her late cousin, WWE Hall of Famer Yokozuna.

Hailing from Melbourne, Indi Hartwell joined NXT in 2019 and soon joined The Way, a faction featuring Johnny Gargano, Candice LeRae, and Austin Theory.

Hartwell and LeRae would unsuccessfully challenge for the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship multiple times before finally capturing gold in a street fight on March 5, 2021.

Hartwell later began an on-screen romance with the silent-type wrestler Dexter Lumis, proposing to Lumis after the pair won a mixed tag-team match. The pair’s relationship would culminate when they were married (in storyline) and Lumis spoke his first ever words: “I do.”

Indi Hartwell won the NXT Women’s Championship at NXT Stand & Deliver on April 1, 2023; however, she would relinquish the title 31 days later after being called up to the main roster.

Bronson Reed enjoyed a distinguished indie run before arriving in NXT in 2019, appearing for, among others; Revolution Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling NOAH, wXw, and the prestigious American indie Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG).

He defeated Johnny Gargano on May 18, 2021 to become the first non-American holder of the NXT North American Championship. Reed lost the title to Swerve Strickland a few months later, and shortly after that was released in one of WWE’s many pandemic-era layoff rounds.

Reed didn’t slow down, however, as he entered New Japan Pro Wrestling’s G1 Climax; a grueling month-long tournament that is widely considered to feature the best wrestlers in the world.

Reed would perform exceedingly well in the tournament, finishing just behind Kazuchika Okada in the Group A standing. Reed even scored a victory over Okada, who by many accounts is the greatest professional wrestler in the world today.

Bronson Reed rejoined WWE in December of 2022 as a member of the Raw brand.

Peter “Outback Jack” Stilsbury began wrestling in Stu Hart’s famous Stampede Wrestling promotion based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

He was called up to the WWF within a month to capitalize on the success of Crocodile Dundee, a popular fish-out-of-water movie featuring a rural Australian navigating the streets of New York City.

Outback Jack would don a vest and crocodile teeth necklaces, and star in a series of promotional vignettes depicting him driving a jeep around the Australian Outback and drinking beer.

The majority of Jack’s victories were squash matches that saw him gain the upper hand on various jobbers. However, he did score victories over notable wrestlers including The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff.

The next entry on our list of the best WWE wrestlers from Australia is Melbourne’s own Buddy Matthews (Buddy Murphy and later simply Murphy in WWE).

A physical powerhouse with an extremely athletic move set, Matthews is a former NXT Tag Team Champion, WWE Cruiserweight Champion, and WWE Raw Tag Team Champion alongside current WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins.

Matthews was granted a release from his WWE contract in June of 2021 after a series of awkward storylines; notably, the angle that saw him kiss Aalyah Mysterio (daughter of Rey Mysterio) in a clunky romance storyline Matthews has since admitted made him uncomfortable with at the time.

It’s worth noting that Matthews has the highest Cagematch.net rating of any male on this list, finishing only behind Toni Storm and his fiancée Rhea Ripley. These days Matthews is a part of Aleister Black’s House of Black stable in AEW, and is a former AEW World Trios Champion.

Cassie Lee and Billy Kay performed in WWE as the memorable tag team The IIconics.

The real-life friends debuted on NXT TV in October 2016, winning the “Breakout of the Year” award at that year’s NXT Year-End Awards show. The IIconics spent the next two years in NXT before being called up to the main roster In April of 2018, attacking then-champion Charlotte Flair and causing her to lose the SmackDown World Women’s Championship to Carmella.

The IIconics wouldn’t have to wait long to claim gold of their own, however, as the duo won a fatal four-way match at WrestleMania 35 to win the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship. Their reign would last 120 days.

Lee and Kay later disbanded as part of a stipulation after losing a match against the Riott Squad. Royce was soon drafted to Raw and Kay to SmackDown, and both IIconics were released on April 15, 2021, in one of several pandemic-era mass releases carried out by WWE.

The two would show up in TNA (Impact Wrestling at the time) and become the first team to win both the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship and Impact Knockouts Tag Team Championship. After losing the titles, Lee and Kay announced they would be stepping away from in-ring competition in April of 2022.

Tenille Dashwood (Emma in WWE) began training for professional wrestling at 13, and at 18 moved to Canada to train at Lance Storm’s Storm Wrestling Academy.

In 2011 Dashwood signed with the WWE and debuted on NXT after shoulder surgery kept her out of action for the better part of a year.

The next two years would see Dashwood compete in NXT alongside the “Four Horsewomen” (Bayley, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, and Becky Lynch), and on January 13, 2014, she was called up to the main roster. Her first WWE run most notably featured an on-screen relationship with Santino Morella, and Dashwood would lose to AJ Lee in a 14-woman battle for the then-WWE Divas Championship.

She was released from WWE in October 2017 and rejoined the company in 2022 after notable stops in Ring of Honor and Impact, where she was a one-time Impact Knockout Tag Team Champion alongside Madison Rayne.

Emma was released once more in September of 2023, and has since stated that she’s unsure if she’ll ever step inside of the squared circle again.

Even if that’s true, she will go down as one of the best WWE Australian female wrestlers of all-time. She also caps my personal top 10, but I’d love to hear if you think I got the order correct, or if there’s a great Aussie wrestler I left out.

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