Tyler Breeze Reveals WWE's Plans To Fire Him At End Of ESPN E60 Documentary

When ESPN ran an E60 on WWE NXT, it focused on Tyler Breeze, amongst others, and how they fought to establish themselves in the cut throat world of the WWE.

However, just how cut-throat WWE can be was never shown on the documentary, and Breeze has now revealed that WWE planned to fire him at the end of the doc. 

Breeze revealed the plans to Renee Young on Oral Sessions, saying:

“We were doing a thing with ESPN. It was an E60. It was on Woods, Leo Kruger, Colin Cassidy, myself, and Cory Graves. What we were told at the time was that we were just doing a cool, E60 piece on the five of us. I was like, ‘Cool, awesome, great.’ As we were filming it, I started to transition into Tyler Breeze, so they got the whole transition and my debut.

“Well, Triple H tells us at the end of one of those meetings, at the end of the tapings, that the E60 thing we were doing was supposed to have a couple guys who made it, a couple guys who we don’t know, and a couple guys who got fired. Me and Big Cass were supposed to be the two that got fired. During the time, I found Tyler Breeze and he found his thing with Enzo, and it completely 180’d, and all of a sudden they were like, ‘We can’t fire these guys.  They’re doing good now. He said that for the first time in front of everybody, and we went, ‘Oh my God. The thing we were excited about, we were going to get fired at the end of?’ We had no idea.”

The story did pan out differently, as both Breeze and Cass broke out in NXT:

“Fortunately for me and Cass, we both found something that saved us again,” continued Breeze “I think I debuted and everybody was like, cool, there’s something here. They booked me in matches to where they were learning who I was. The crowd was starting to get into it, but I still wasn’t going towards the NXT title. I was never going towards being the guy, the face in NXT, a big babyface turn, or anything like that. I remember the first test. They were like, ‘Ok, this is a cool gimmick. He comes out, takes the pictures, wrestles a tiny bit, and we can see if there is any substance to it.’ I had a match with Sami Zayn at the first TakeOver. After that, I remember Triple H pulled me aside and said, ‘Kevin Dunn called and he loves the Tyler Breeze character. Vince also saw it and Vince likes the character.’ He said, ‘This was the proving point that there is more to Tyler Breeze than just the gimmick. Now you can have a match. Now we know we can do something with this.’ I was like, ‘Awesome.’

“I worked with Sami [Zayn]. That was the test. After that I worked with Neville. Then I worked a Fatal Four Way with me, Neville, and T.J. [Tyson Kidd] Then I worked with Kenta, Finn [Balor], and I essentially worked with everyone they were going to go with. It wasn’t so much a push as opposed to that I can be a reliable guy that you can toss in there with whoever you like and we can make them look really good. I think Triple H even said a couple times that there’s a certain quality that some guys have and some guys don’t. He said, ‘You can basically lift people up to a certain level without bringing yourself down to a different level. You can keep yourself a star while bringing them up to a certain star level as well.’ Obviously, if you’re introducing somebody like a Finn, Kenta, or whoever, that is a huge thing because the first impression of a new person, we have to knock it out of the park if we’re going with them or if they’re heading towards being a main event guy or a NXT Champion. You need somebody like that gatekeeper to go, ‘Hey guys, welcome. This is what they can do by the way.’”

H/T: WrestlingNews.co