8 Things We Learned From Tyler Breeze On The Sam Roberts Show

3. Training

Roberts mentions that Breeze was trained by Lance Storm prior to joining WWE and he confirms that he was, and Sam calls him one of the best wrestlers and trainers of all-time - a bit of a stretch - to which Tyler agrees. He asks what the transition was like going from Storm's Academy to NXT, and asked if he had to forget a lot of what he'd been taught. Tyler says there's a lot to it, basically calling himself a clean slate for Lance who taught him how to work a match in the ring from start to finish. He adds that they worked on a couple of character things but that they never got too far into developing personas, rather they just focused on the fundamentals. Once he arrived at NXT he was exposed to a new group of trainers who all have a different style. He cites Norman Smiley as being someone who is a technical genius and a master of a lot of little things that you'd never even think of, but at the same time he's a master of character portrayal as evidenced by his run as Screamin' Norman Smiley in WCW. You take little bits and pieces of all the trainers and incorporate it into what you're going to become. Roberts talks about how a lot of fans probably aren't familiar with Smiley outside of his WCW work and have no idea how accomplished he was during his career. Breeze also names Billy Gunn and Terry Taylor and their invaluable experience from different eras, and says the smart students take knowledge from all of them, otherwise you're just wasting resources that you should be taking advantage of.