Tyler Breeze began appearing at NXT Live Events after WrestleMania last year. He made his TV return to the black and gold brand on the May 22 episode of NXT by starting a feud with North American Champion Velveteen Dream.
Breeze then went one-on-one with Dream at NXT TakeOver: XXV, and it was confirmed after the show that Breeze was a full-time member of NXT once again after nearly four years on the main roster.
It has emerged that before a move back to Full Sail, Tyler Breeze told WWE officials that he wanted to stop wrestling and leave the company.
In an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Breeze revealed that he was unhappy with how he was being used and asked the company to leave. However, they wanted him to stay and suggested a move back to NXT:
“I was like, ‘I don’t think I wanna wrestle anymore. Like, I don’t think I want to.’ I kinda had a conversation like, ‘If you don’t need me I’m good to go. I don’t need to be here.’ It kinda got turned into, ‘Okay, we don’t really wanna see you go so let’s make this work. I mean, that’s when I made the transition down to NXT and it kinda started to reinvigorate me a little bit. I went to a couple of schools around Orlando to kinda try and get the juices flowing again because I was getting really disheartened.
“I started to realize that wrestling wasn’t the problem, wrestling’s awesome. It’s just like when you’re in a certain spot and when you get in a certain mindset it’s hard to kick out of that and I was just in that mindset and I was just getting angry and bitter and I realized that wrestling’s not the problem.”
Of course, there is no confirmation that AEW would have brought Breeze in if he left WWE, but the fact that the promotion has signed with likes of Jake Hager, Goldust and Jon Moxley probably incentivised WWE to stop Breeze from leaving.