Tyler Breeze made his official return to the NXT brand in the Spring of 2019 and it was in May of 2019 that Breeze confronted the-then NXT North American Champion, Velveteen Dream which led to the two having a spotlighted match at NXT TakeOver: XXV. Breeze is still a member of the NXT roster as he regularly competes at live events and in singles competition on NXT on the USA Network. Breeze has also been working the 205 Live shows following Friday Night SmackDown.
Breeze arrived in WWE in 2010 and was assigned to FCW. He spent five years in FCW/NXT before he was called up to the main roster. While appearing on the Swerve City Podcast with Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, Teasy and AEW’s Big Swole, Breeze opened up about his days in WWE’s developmental brand. He talked about how he was also cutting it close when it came to being let go from the company and later revealed that he and former WWE star Big Cass were supposed to be fired from WWE at the conclusion of ESPN’s E:60 documentary about NXT that released in 2015. Breeze accredited him and Cass not being fired to both men coming up with creative ideas for their respective characters.
“I get brought into a room, and it was me, Corey Graves, Xavier Woods, Colin Cassady [Big Cass] and somebody else… Adam Rose, and we’re told that we’re doing an ESPN thing. We’re doing an E:60, and so of course we’re all like, ‘Awesome. This is great, this is really cool.’ So they follow us around, they do some interviews, they do all this other stuff. Little did I know, I find this out after. After Tyler Breeze comes into existence, and I end up being on NXT and it took like a year or whatever it was… after I came into existence and Cassady, the same thing. Enzo and Cass went together and they became a thing. Hunter’s in front doing the post-NXT chat and he’s talking to everybody, and he goes, ‘Alright, just so you know, on this E:60, there was supposed to be guys that made it and guys that did not make it.’ Me and Colin Cassady were supposed to be the guys that did not make it and got fired at the end of this thing. We had no idea. We thought it was like, ‘Hey, these are the guys we want to showcase.’ Not the case whatsoever. We were supposed to be fired. Hunter’s telling everybody that we were supposed to be fired and now because we came up with stuff, our job is saved. Six months before that, I’m about to get fired again so, we do the E:60 thing. I guess they’re supposed to fire me but they can’t fire me until the episodes come up.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Breeze shared that the idea for 205 Live was originally presented to him in 2011. While he was in FCW, there were talks of doing a Cruiserweight show and in 2016, WWE debuted the 205 Live brand that has now been around for four years.
“Also, you’ll like this: I’m being told at the time, ‘Hey, we’ve got a big plan for you. We’re going to be doing a WWE Cruiserweight show.’ This was back in 2011. It took from 2011, to when 205 [Live] came out for that to come out.”
Tyler Breeze was last in action on last week’s episode of NXT on-which he took on the current NXT Cruiserweight Champion Jordan Devlin. This past December, Tyler Breeze’s tag team partner Fandango underwent Tommy John surgery so Breeze has been in singles competition and working extensively on the UpUpDownDown YouTube gaming channel.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Swerve City Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
