Tyler Breeze reflects on his decade-plus long career.
After spending 11 years with WWE, Matt Clement (Tyler Breeze) was released from the company. Throughout his years in WWE, he captured the NXT and FCW Tag Titles along with being spotlighted on Raw, SmackDown and NXT at various points throughout his run.
Breeze is 33 years of age and the last time he competed outside of WWE was in 2019 while the company was working with EVOLVE. He was the latest guest to chat with Chris Denker on ‘Into The Danger Zone’ and Breeze said if his in-ring career was over as of the podcast recording, he’d be satisfied with what he’s done. He added that seeing Adam Cole debut in AEW lit that fire in him again.
So I think so [Breeze would be satisfied if his wrestling career ended as of the podcast recording]. I think like, when I look back — so I — if I look back on what I’ve actually done and not even just myself but the guys I’ve gotten to wrestle and the things I’ve gotten to do and the matches I’ve been able to have with these really great people, I think I can definitely hang my hat on that and go, ‘Look man, I don’t need to sit here and tell you that I’m good or you should come get trained by me’ or that I was in a certain category or whatever. Just watch the stuff that I’ve done and decide for yourself. If you’re entertained by the stuff I do, fantastic, my job is complete. If you watch it and you’re like, ‘Man, I wish there was more, I wish there was this’, cool man, that’s awesome. It’s okay to — there’s too much of a good thing, you know what I mean? It’s okay that you end up wanting more. I like that feeling but overall, my career, I’ve been very, very lucky on how it turned out, I’ve been very lucky on the matches I’ve been able to have. I’ve had an absolute blast wrestling around the world. If there is still more in me will be another question, which I think — so — especially the pandemic-era if we’re calling it that. Wrestling in front of nobody kind of soured me a little bit on some things. I remember I was literally mid-match with Tony Nese and we’re having a match that I’m enjoying it, and I think we’re both laying there or something and I turned to him and went, ‘Man, I feel if a crowd was here, they’d be into this and the fact that there’s no crowd here really — I feel ripped off.’ I need it. This is why we do this so the people are entertained and it kind of soured me and crowds kind of slowly started coming in and I got a little bit of that, but definitely what kind of sparked it again was watching [Adam] Cole debut on AEW. When he came out dude, hearing people go nuts and watching people go crazy and everything else, I went, ‘Oh! That’s why we do this.’
Breeze opened up about the injuries he has tallied up during his career. While there have been no major surgeries or injuries, he said he is currently dealing with a vertebra in his back that is broken and he also has a tear in his shoulder.
That fact that I’ve wrestled 14 years, almost damn near about as perfect as you can. Bump-wise, everything else. I’ve had no surgeries, I do have a little bit of stuff banged up here and there. I’ve had a couple concussions. I have one injury that sounds really bad but it’s really not that bad. I have a vertebra in my back that’s kind of broken in half. If I do certain things, it’ll slide forward and kind of press against all the nerves and my leg stops working and I just have to like hang on a bench and pop [it] back in and we’re good. But, it’s not that bad, it’s not that bad, and then I have a torn shoulder but I think everybody has a torn shoulder basically. It’s been torn for years at this point.
Breeze’s former tag team partner Dirty Dango (Fandango) is back in the swings of things post-WWE and was in action at WrestlePro’s ‘Welcome Back’ show on 10/16.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Into The Danger Zone with Chris Denker with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
