THE NEW BREED
Sean Royal and Chris Champion
1986 - 1987
NWA Florida Tag Team Champion
Written by Adam Zimmerman
The New Breed was an interesting duo to say the least. Comprised of newcomers to the sport, Sean Royal and Chris Champion, The New Breed started their tag team career in the legendary Florida Championship Wrestling territory. There, they were given a somewhat elaborate, assuredly ridiculous, backstory involving them traveling back in time from the (at the time) future year of 2002.
This begs at least a couple of questions - 1) Why would time travellers go back in time to become regional, heel wrestlers in the Southeastern United States? Wouldn't there be more important things to do while time travelling? 2) If they were from 2002 and appear to be in their early 20's; where are "little" Sean Royal and Chris Champion running around while their grown up versions are wrestling on television? I mean, they would have been about 6 or 7 years old at the same time that their 20 year old counterparts were on television. Wouldn't this confuse them and their parents to no end?
Regardless of "plot holes", the gimmick did provide some amusement. While in FCW, The New Breed constantly referred to Dusty Rhodes as "Mr. President", insinuating that Rhodes had won the 2000 presidential election of the United States. For the record, I would have voted for him! They also cut promos referring to their "flux capacitor" that they used for time travel and even referencing "Transformers", pledging their allegiance to the "Decepticons".
A short time later, they turned up in Jim Crockett Promotions and immediately started feuding with The Rock & Roll Express. They informed Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson that in 2002, the R & R Express were "midget slaves". At the same time, The New Breed also feuded with "Boogie Woogie Man" Jimmy Valiant and Lazer Tron (Hector Guerrero). They believed that Lazer Tron was a real robot and warned him, "You won't believe what you're doing in 2002!".
If you can't tell by now, their promos were pretty horrendous for the most part. Chris Champion could occasionally get fired up and do okay on the mic but Sean Royal would always sound sort of drunk and at a loss for words. Mind you, I don't think he was actually inebriated in any way, he just sort of acted that way. At one point, they even started using a small "robot valet" named XTC-1 (Ecstacy-1), who wasn't the least bit sexy and whom appeared to speak out of her crotch; at least if you go by Jim Cornette's microphone placement during the interview here...
Before any big angles could come to head for The New Breed in JCP, they were involved in a car accident, derailing their momentum Chris Champion was hurt pretty badly but Sean Royal was not and he tried to keep The New Breed alive, during Chris Champion's absence through bizarre promos claiming that Champion was standing next to him, even though you couldn't see him or saying that Champion travelled back to 2002 to get "physically upgraded" and would soon return.
Eventually, Chris Champion made his return (to do a couple of promos, at least), but Sean Royal decided to retire almost immediately and become a construction worker. All in all, The New Breed didn't last long but they had a lot of potential to become a big tag team of the late 80s. I think Jim Ross used to say it best though when he said, "Potential doesn't buy groceries". Regardless, The New Breed fascinated me at the time as I'm sure they did a lot of folks and they deserve some sort of place in the annals of great (or at least notable) tag teams.