wrestling / Columns

Breezango’s Time Is Now

May 4, 2017 | Posted by Steve Cook
Breezango Tyler Breeze and Fandango Fashion Police WWE WWE Main Event, Dirty Dango Image Credit: WWE

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a wrestling fan is watching people that have put up with a lot of adversity break through and get an opportunity. Not everybody can get a push all the time, but sometimes it seems like talent that deserves better gets the short end of the stick way too often. WWE’s roster being as large as it is means there’s always going to be a decent supply of talent getting underutilized & underappreciated. It’s a numbers game.

Eventually, if wrestlers are patient and bide their time, they usually get some kind of a chance. SmackDown Live is seeing that in two of their title divisions right now. Jinder Mahal’s push has gotten most of the attention & debate lately, so this week I’d like to call notice to two other guys that have taken a very long time to be an overnight success.

Fandango & Tyler Breeze have had very similar careers up until this point. Both signed with WWE developmental and spent years down there working the territory and helping others get better while other wrestlers came & went. Fandango, working as Johnny Curtis at the time, won NXT Season 4 and seemed to be on the verge of big things. He wasn’t. He was part of NXT: Redemption and stayed there until the bitter end, not getting much in the way of attention from most fans. He re-emerged months later as Fandango, a flamboyant ballroom dancer that ended up getting over with the fans due to his theme music. The high point of his career was WrestleMania XXIX, where he beat Chris Jericho. The next night on Raw, singing his theme music became the thing to do.

It’s very catchy. The Fandangoing craze wasn’t really followed up on, however, and Fandango slowly fell into obscurity and the lower mid-card.

Around the same time all the Fandangoing was going on, Tyler Breeze emerged in NXT. A young wrestler there known as Mike Dalton at the time hadn’t really stood out in NXT in spite of his solid in-ring ability. He needed to come up with something, and he came up with the character of Tyler Breeze. Known as the Prince of Pretty, Breeze started connecting with the NXT crowd due to his entertaining, self-obsessed character that had a penchant for shooting his own entrance with an iPhone. The people loved him, and he also had catchy music.

He was called up to the main roster in late 2015 associating with Summer Rae, who ironically enough had been Fandango’s dance partner up until April 2014. That connection didn’t last long, and neither did Breeze’s push, as he fell deep into a losing streak up until he & Fandango would cross paths in May. There was this weird thing going on where R-Truth wouldn’t team with Goldust, and somehow Fandango & Breeze got dragged into it. Fandango & Breeze decided to make the decision for them, turning on R-Truth & Goldust after a match on SmackDown. Breezango (and The Golden Truth) was born. It seemed like a nice idea in theory, combining two under-utilized guys that on paper looked like a good match. The only problem was that instead of being under-utilized separately, they became under-utilized together.

SmackDown likes to call itself the Land of Opportunity and is known for giving talent a chance that might not get it otherwise. But even they only have so many opportunities to give. Not everybody can be in the main event or getting title shots or winning on a regular basis. Some guys will fall between the cracks, and Breezango was in that boat. They’d occasionally appear in some division-wide match but they didn’t get a chance to stand out. They became Fashion Polcie members and did some online videos that people laughed at, but most people didn’t notice. What they needed was a unique opportunity.

The turning point for Breezango was on the March 21 edition of SmackDown when Fandango was booked in a match with John Cena that didn’t seem notable other than it would pit Southpaw Regional Wrestling announcers Chett Chetterfield & Lance Catamaran against each other. Things got a bit off the beaten path when Fandango introduced his sidekick for the evening…Breezy Bella.

Tyler Breeze dressed up as Nikki Bella. He & Fandango got beaten up by WWE’s biggest star and his future fiancee. Some people thought of this as a travesty of justice and wondered why WWE would treat these two underappreciated talents this way. To have them doing nothing and re-surface for a comedy segment with John Cena & Nikki Bella…what was the point?

To get attention, of course.

Sometimes a comedy segment like this can ruin a career. Sometimes, it can extend one. In the position Breezango was in, an underutilized tag team on a show where tag teams haven’t been a high priority, an opportunity like this was just like the doctor ordered. Fandango played his character to perfection, Tyler knocked it out of the park with his role as Breezy Bella, and the fans enjoyed the show. WWE brass surely took notice of the reaction the segment got, which at least from what I saw, was mostly positive and had much praise for Breeze & Fandango. Cena & Nikki got a kick out of working with them too, as was made obvious on the Bellas’ YouTube channel.

When you do a good job and make the people happy, good things will eventually happen. Sometimes it’s a pretty long wait. But eventually, if you do your job, don’t cause problems and make the people want to see you, you’ll get a chance.

Breezango has earned an opportunity, and on April 25th’s SmackDown Live they finally earned one. After months of being at or near the bottom of SmackDown’s tag team division, they Beat the Clock and will get a title shot against The Usos at Backlash on May 21. They’re also getting a chance to showcase their characters on television more, as Tuesday night’s SmackDown featured a vignette on their life outside the ring entitled “The Fashion Files”. One can hope it’s a regular feature.

The big question, of course, is where it leads. Is this the start of something more for Breezango? Will they win the Tag Team Titles at Backlash?

They should.

Here’s the thing: we know Jimmy & Jey Uso. They’re very talented. They’re as solid a regular tag team as there’s been in WWE in the 2010s. They’re a fine choice as Tag Team Champions at any time. But the downside is that we know where their ceiling is. They’re solid. But they’re not going to set the world on fire.

We don’t know Breezdango’s ceiling. Maybe it’s not all that high. Maybe if they get the titles and the big push they become just another team and run out of things to do. Maybe too much exposure ends up being a bad thing. On the other hand, maybe they get over huge. Maybe they revitalize SmackDown’s tag team division. Maybe Fandango & Tyler Breeze realize the potential that their fans think they have. Maybe the Fashion Po Po will bring tons of entertainment to SmackDown Live.

We don’t know unless they try. That’s why I say pull the trigger. SD’s tag division has nothing to lose at this point, which means they can take chances on guys that haven’t been pushed to the moon before. The worst that could happen is that Fandango & Tyler Breeze don’t get over, and they wind up in the same place they were before all of this.

I think they’ll succeed. If they don’t, it won’t be for a lack of trying. They’ve worked their entire careers to get to this moment. Why not give them the ball and see how far they can take it?