The Fashion Files: Why Do They Keep Getting Misplaced?

In 2013, Fandango defeated the first ever Undisputed Champion, Chris Jericho, at Wrestlemania 29. That same year, announcements were broadcast each time Tyler Breeze entered or left the building at NXT’s home, Full Sail University.

By 2016, both men were floundering in the purgatory so often referred to as ‘mid-card obscurity’. That might even be a little generous, as quite often they were simply MIA. As that summer approached, WWE began teasing the pairing of two its longest standing veterans, R-Truth and Goldust. Goldie initially brushed off Truth’s proposals, only to have a change of heart when Truth lost interest. It was a sort of ‘will they, won’t they’ storyline.

Breeze and Fandango were used as pawns throughout the shenanigans that would ultimately (and obviously) lead us to the forming of the team dubbed The Golden Truth. Following a series of one-on-one matches featuring all four superstars, and with R-Truth and Goldust still not quite on the same page, we wound up with The Gorgeous Truth vs. GoldDango one May night on Smackdown. While Fandando turning on his partner, Goldust, allowing Tyler Breeze to score the pinfall, would finally get R-Truth to agree to team with the golden son of a common man, it also saw the birth of another tag-team: Breezango.

The point may have been to get The Golden Truth over as a tandem, but only one of these pairings is still tagging today.

As a team, Breeze and Dango don’t even have a proper entrance theme. A year and a half since partnering they make their way down the ramp to a mishmash of both of their individual theme songs. Even the team’s name, Breezango, screams that they are nothing more than a pair of guys who had nothing better to do and were thrown together for the sake of it – although, as they revealed recently on Talk is Jericho, Vince loved the name and so they love it too, even if they would have preferred a name that could have offered an endorsement deal with a major brand of air freshener. Maybe the chairman cares about these guys after all.

As the months passed and the brands split once more, Breezango were given microphones on Talking Smack (RIP, we hardly knew ye, etc.) and allowed to show a little of their personalities. Dressing as cops – almost of the stripper variety, one might argue – the duo handed out tickets for fashion felonies and, although they’re still known as Breezango (because Vince loves it, remember) they took on the nickname of the Fashion Police. And they started to get over.

This led to a post-Wrestlemania season run at the tag-team titles with The Usos for our fashionable heroes. It was during this feud that we saw the first episode of The Fashion Files, a backstage skit in which they declared The Usos to be public enemy number one with their ‘Day One Is H’ (what does it mean?) t-shirts. After losing the rivalry in a series of entertaining bouts, Breezango needed something new to do while The Usos moved on to their epic summer-long programme with The New Day.

Not only did the fans respond well to The Fashion Files skits, but so did those who run the show, it seemed, as they became a regular fixture of Smackdown going forward. They were wacky, outlandish and removed somewhat from the same ‘Universe’ as the rest of the show, while also giving The Ascension some love. It didn’t take long for the segments to start parodying a wide range of crime-fighting classics such as Miami Vice, before taking on X-Files and, most notably, Twin Peaks.

That one even wound up going viral in the mainstream world outside of the WWE Universe. Breezango was over with non-wrestling fans for a minute; something nobody would have predicted mere months earlier.

As for the story they were telling, somebody or somebodies had attacked Tyler Breeze, and Fandango went missing for a few weeks. While Dango’s disappearance was written off as an alien abduction, we never discovered Prince Pretty’s attacker(s). And that’s been the big problem with The Fashion Files, for as entertaining as they are – and they’re often the most entertaining segment on any given show – it’s starting feel like they never truly go anywhere other than round in circles. Or if there is a resolution, it’s mentioned in passing or go not even mentioned at all, as was the case when The Fashion Files returned at Hell in a Cell. Breeze and Dango discussed closing the case of ‘2B’, but never revealed to the audience who the perp was.

Speaking of Hell in a Cell, the Fashion Files segment ended with the promise of more Fashion Files on last week’s Smackdown, which never materialised. This isn’t the first time that this has happened, as Fashion Files were originally meant to reveal the 2B perps at Summerslam, only to be cut from that show. Again, it feels like we’re spinning our wheels.

It seems that the unexpected success of Fashion Files is also its downfall, as there has likely never been a long-term plan in place. It has even been joked, during the finale of Fashion Peaks, that they’re kind of making it up as they go along.

And that’s been fine to a point, but it’s time we started solving some cases. A new case has been opened and the Bludgeon Brothers are on the way. Coincidence? We’ll see. I just hope we get to see more of Breeze and Fandango doing their thing with a little creative freedom in the land of opportunity. While the Fashion Files were missed on Smackdown this week, Breezango did at least appear before the live crowd and were even given a bit of a rub from The Usos and New Day who, while running down all of the other tag teams in the division, refused to dis the Fashion Cops cause ‘they cool, Use’! And their characters don’t even need to be confined to backstage skits for their brand of comedy to work, as demonstrated on a recent episode of 205 Live.

Whatever future cases await our chic and trendy detective heroes, as long as they continue to put their all into the characters and have fun, they’ll be fine, but let’s hope WWE figures out exactly what it’s doing with them.