Back in 2015, then-NXT Superstar Tyler Breeze went one-on-one with the legendary Japanese wrestler Jushin Thunder Liger at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn. At the time, Liger was a member of New Japan Pro Wrestling's roster, and his one-off appearance on a WWE show almost led to a partnership between the two companies, according to Breeze.
Breeze was chatting to former colleague and fellow Canadian Renee Paquette on Oral Sessions when he revealed that although the Liger match was obviously a big deal for his career, he doesn't actually consider it one of his best matches.
"In my eleven years with WWE, I don’t know if I ever actually received an official push," Breeze said. "A lot of people hold the Liger match in high regard as a really good match. Me personally, it was special because it’s him. But in terms of matches, if you have five matches to watch that will make you a fan of mine, I don’t know if it would be on the list. Because technically, it’s not one of the ones I’m proud of," he confessed. "I don’t hold it in the same category as the fatal four-way or the one I had with Sami (Zayn) or whatever. But it’s very special for what it is."
The former NXT Tag Team Champion then hinted that the Liger deal was a precursor to the current openings of numerous "forbidden doors" between rival wrestling promotions.
"But even then it wasn’t what I’d call a push, it was more an olive branch to New Japan for what we were going to do at the time, and where we were going," he said. "I was very much the first Forbidden Door to everything until we messed it up," he added.
Breeze didn't go into any more detail or elaborate on how a potential NJPW/WWE partnership was scuppered, but it's fun to think about what could have been.
Breeze's 11-year WWE career came to an end on June 25 when he was released by WWE alongside several of his now-former colleagues as a result of budget cuts, allegedly necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, Breeze opened a wrestling school called Flatbacks Wrestling in Apopka, Florida, with his former WWE colleague Shawn Spears, who now works for AEW.