Why WWE Turned Down Tyler Breeze's Title-Winning Pitch

By Andy H Murray / August 16, 2021

Tyler Breeze has told Chris Van Vliet (on his Insight podcast) that he once pitched beating Velveteen Dream for the NXT North American Championship to the brand's founder and executive director, Triple H.

This would have happened in their match at TakeOver 25 (1 June 2019). The basis of Breeze's argument was that while the match had been built up, nobody would have seen his victory coming and it would have allowed WWE to work towards a second bout between him and Dream (h/t Fightful for the transcriptions):-

"There was one time, I was coming back to work Velveteen Dream at TakeOver and I went to Hunter and I went, ‘I don’t do this, but I feel like this kind of a big deal. Nobody has come back to NXT yet and Velveteen is doing really good. It’s for the North American Title, I feel like the match has build. What do you think about getting two matches out of it? Nobody expects me to win. What if I won the title and at the next TakeOver, we can work again and I’ll drop it back or wherever we’re going to go, but I feel like people would get into it.’"

Triple H disagreed with Breeze, offering the following explanation:-

"Hunter gave me a big speech of, ‘Not everyone has to win a title.’ He started listing off all these guys and was like, ‘They didn’t need the title to get to the next level, they were superstars. ‘It won’t elevate you anywhere else to win the title.’ I don’t know if thought I was trying to just win a title, I was just trying to get two matches out of this. They had different ideas."

Dream ended up defeating the returning Breeze to prolong a reign that lasted until 18 September 2019, when he dropped the North American Title to Roderick Strong on NXT's first night on USA Network. Despite this, Breeze ended up tasting NXT gold 14 months later, when he and partner Fandango have crowned Tag Team Champions.

Both Breezango members were released by WWE on 25 June 2021. Dream had been let go one month prior.