Tyler Breeze Recalls Being “Just Another Guy” In WWE Before Model Character

Tyler Breeze looks back on becoming a male model character in NXT.

Tyler Breeze recalls on how his male model character would come to pass.

In July of 2013, Tyler Breeze would debut his male model gimmick that would catch on quickly in WWE’s developmental brand, NXT. In his time in NXT with the gimmick, he would take selfies frequently both in and outside of matches. The gimmick would catch fire with the NXT audience, and would lead to major opportunities for the superstar, including a one on one matchup with Japanese wrestling legend Jushin Thunder Liger.

While speaking recently on the Two Man Power Trip podcast, Breeze discussed how his character came to be, crediting Triple H’s influence with the character’s development.

“I remember Hunter pulling me aside saying, ‘Hey man, look, we thought the idea for this character, we thought the character might work here and there, it might be a fun little bit in the show. But this was the test to kind of see if there’s legs to this,'” Breeze recalled. “He goes, ‘There’s legs to this; we can do anything with this now.’ From there, again, we got closer.”

Breeze mentioned that with his new gimmick, came more attention from “The Game”.

“When the Tyler Breeze stuff started to hit, it got a little bit closer, to that point, I had kind of just been another guy, lost in the shuffle. I talked to him but there was never really a reason to care about me. When I started doing the Tyler Breeze stuff, then he really kind of went, ‘Alright, I see he’s having fun with it, I see he’s starting to figure this out.'”

Breeze hasn’t competed for WWE since mid 2021, but returned to the ring earlier this year on the independent wrestling circuit.

Elsewhere in the same interview, Breeze discussed some of his dream matches, naming a current All Elite Wrestling star. 

Thank you to Two Man Power Trip for the quotes used in this article.