NXT star Tyler Breeze recently spoke with The Miami Herald to promote Friday’s NXT live event in the city. Below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On his character: “Tyler Breeze is actually a mix of a few of things. It started out as an idea from what I’d seen from a couple of people who came for tryouts from different walks of life — acting, modeling — who didn’t really know what wrestling was or what it was all about. I used to help [WWE NXT Coach] Norman Smiley, and we would train them for about a week. We would teach them the basics, see who was getting used to it, who was taken to it. As we were in there, it wasn’t their fault, but they would say things that were kind of funny. I thought that would be a funny character, somebody from the outside looking in saying, ‘Wrestling looks easy. I can do it.’ I figured let’s go off that and see what happens. [Tyler Breeze] formed from that and bits and piece from other things. Obviously some ‘Zoolander’ mixed in there; some Ben Stiller from ‘Dodgeball’ mixed in there as well; and it turned into what it is.”
On changing his look: “I like to switch it up [the wardrobe] every time that you see me. If you see me once, you’ll see me in something. You’ll see me in colors; you’ll see me in furs; you’ll see in something that as soon as you see it, you’ll go, ‘Wow. I like that,’ or ‘Wow. That guy looks ridiculous. Either way, you have a certain feeling about it. Then the next time you see me, you might be expecting me to be in the same thing, buy you won’t see that. You’ll see a completely different color scheme, or you’ll see some little tweak. Now, some of my newer stuff has fur going down the side as well as the fur tassels that I wear. My vest is starting to be switched up a little bit. It’s always about keeping it fresh and something for people to look forward to seeing what I’m going to wear on the next [NXT] special.”
On using the iPhone in his entrance: “It was actually Triple H’s idea [to use the iPhone]. The initial idea when I first started doing it was with a pocket mirror. I found a nicer one that you could go out and get. It was working, but when Triple H saw it, he said, ‘We’ve done that. We’re past that. There’s a lot more we can do.’ He suggested the selfie. ‘The selfie movement is really big right now, so what if you had a cell phone, taking selfies all the way to the ring and during matches.’ I immediately said, ‘Yea.’
“You can’t go wrong with technology type stuff. It’s always advancing, and especially now more than ever, there’s so much stuff you can do. Everyone is glued to their phone. It’s 2015. Everyone always has their phone on them. They’re constantly checking stuff, checking Twitter, checking Instagram. Everybody wants to know what’s going on. There’s nothing wrong that can come from doing this. So I had the phone, tried that out, and it went from there. We figured out how to stream it up onto our big screen that we have for the entrance, and at the last [NXT] TakeOver [special] we did the Periscope app where everybody was watching as I was making my entrance. Any new app that comes out, any new technology that comes out, I can be the first one to tap into.”
On naming his finisher: “I had like five or six options, and I was mulling them over, but nothing really felt like it was it, and I didn’t want to force it. I repeated them a couple of times. ‘Beauty Shot, Beauty Shot.’ That sounds all right. I think that one will work. That was just one. I had all these ideas, but everything felt forced on trying to name it. I was working with [NXT commentator] Tom Phillips. He said, ‘What do you want me to call this and this and this?’ He was tossing out some ideas, too. I don’t know if that rolls off the tongue. I don’t know if that fits. Finally, I said, ‘A superkick. What about a Supermodel Kick?’ He said, ‘I love it. I love it . I’ll say it tonight.’ He’s good because he always comes to me and asks, ‘Hey, you got anything new that your going to do or you have a name for anything that you want me to call.’ If it catches on, it catches on, and luckily those two have caught on, so far, and I’m working on some more.”
Check out the complete interview at MiamiHerald.com.
