Tyler Breeze Talks Xavier Woods Helping Him, His Character, NXT

NXT Superstar and the man self-perceived as “gorgeous,” Tyler Breeze, recently appeared on AfterBuzzTV’s “NXT After Show” to talk about various aspects of his career with WWE thus far. Below are some of the highlights from the conversation.

Breeze noted how New Day star Xavier Woods helped develop his current character:

“I came to a crossroads at NXT [with my character Mike Dalton]…And fortunately for me, [Xavier Woods] is a genius when it comes to technology stuff. Saying he is a genius at one thing, he’s kind of a genius at all things. And at the time he had somehow got ahold of some video editing software…He was figuring out how to edit these really cool videos. He basically said, “We’re going to turn this around. I’m going to come over today and come up with like 5 or 10 characters. We’re going to throw them at everybody and say, ‘What about this one? What about this one?’ I came up with three different ones. One was a snowboarder. One was a darker version of Mike Dalton, which I was at the time. And one was Tyler Breeze. As we were filming it, we were laughing our heads off…but I had eight other characters ready to go. I ended up getting a couple emails back saying, ‘You might have something with this Tyler Breeze thing. None of it would have happened if [Xavier Woods] hadn’t made these videos. And he’s done a lot for other people down here too.”

He discussed whether his character was influenced by the popular film “Zoolander” or not:

“Everyone thinks it must have been inspired by ‘Zoolander,’ but the funny thing is it really wasn’t until later. I kind of based it off the people I had seen come in and try out. There’s a lot of people in a lot of different industries that do that. There’s people on the outside that come in and think, ‘Nah It can’t be that hard. I can do this.’ They were actors and models and they would try to give wrestling a try and they would happen to say some funny things. At the time I was Mike Dalton. I was very much a wrestler and nobody really wanted to see it. And I thought, why not go entirely the opposite. I’m going to wrestle like I don’t know how to wrestle, I’m just this outsider looking in and from there it kind of turned into that he was a model…from there, I did this face at the end of interviews and then I started watching some ‘Zoolander’ stuff and switched my voice a little bit. As I started doing more interviews it kind of turned into more of Ben Stiller from Dodgeball than it actually was ‘Zoolander.’ I was this loose cannon that would get angry at anything and everything you asked me was the stupidest question I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Breeze also talked about the exposure NXT is getting on the main roster and what it means going forward:

“It’s good for everything. It’s intriguing. Everything in the last couple of months, with Zayn coming up and showing that he can hang with Cena. Neville just freshly debuting showing that he can hang with Cena and then we’ve got Owens coming up and laying out Cena. He’s creating a lot of intrigue. Heading into this PPV I think it’s less about the individuals [debuting] and more about NXT. It’s showing that NXT is WWE. It’s not below it. It’s side by side…We’ve had guys like Rhyno coming in, like Tommy Dreamer coming in. NXT has got this feel to it. It’s very similar to that thing ECW had. [The fans] are very loyal and they feel like NXT is cutting edge. The fact that I’m getting to be in the opportunities that I’m in…the fact we’re getting to do that is cool.”

More from the interview can be seen below: