Dexter Lumis says the spot where he licked opponents in NXT came out of trying to unsettle the audience, and that Road Dogg’s instruction to him was to go too far and let the company pull him back.
Chris Van Vliet raised the story on Insight after Road Dogg told it recently: that he would have Lumis get an opponent in a headlock and then lick him.
“Trying to stand out, trying to be different,” Lumis said. “It did work because people were unsure. What’s this guy all about? What gets him up? What’s going on here?”
He traced it to his NXT television debut at Full Sail Live against Bronson Reed.
“I’m beating the hell out of him and he’s sitting on his ass, and I just got him and grabbing his head, and then I just look at everybody and I just get down and I lick his face, and the whole crowd was just like, oh,” Lumis said. “Sometimes you pinpoint somebody in the crowd and you watch them, and that person was just like, what?”
He said the instruction behind it was a general principle he was given early.
“That’s one of those things. It’s like, okay, I was always taught go above and beyond. We can always pull you back,” Lumis said. “If you don’t do that, we don’t know how far you’ll take it. So obviously that was kind of pulled back a little bit. It didn’t become part of the shtick all the time.”
The character it belonged to was built on the same idea. Lumis worked most of his WWE run without speaking, a decision that started in NXT and held through the main roster and the Wyatt Sicks. The silence, the stare and the licking were all doing the same job, which was making an audience unsure what they were watching.
Road Dogg posted publicly after Lumis was released in April, writing that WWE had the right person and the right talent and had nothing for him. Lumis said the working relationship went well beyond the one spot.
“I love Road Dogg. He has one of the most infectious laughs. It doesn’t even matter what he says. If he’s laughing really hard about something, I just want to join in,” he said. “He’s always helped me hone in on the character for the situations I’m in. Try this right here. Try that right there. He’s very, very good at that, the character stuff. And that’s really what wrestling is, the characters.”
Lumis said the test they used was a simple one.
“You’ve got to put yourself in the mindset of a fan, or especially a kid. What would make a kid want to buy your action figure? That’s stuff that Road Dogg and I would talk about,” he said.
Road Dogg also worked hands-on with the Wyatt Sicks later on. Lumis said he and Triple H walked the group through the house used for their vignettes, blocking out where each of them would appear.
Lumis had a long run before any of this. He started on the independents in 2007, signed with TNA in 2010, won the Gut Check competition there in 2012 and spent a spell in Ohio Valley Wrestling before returning to TNA television, then left in 2015 and went back to the independents for five years. WWE signed him in 2019, when he was in his mid-30s and older than the developmental system had historically taken.
That background is part of why the character advice landed. He had been working for twelve years before he got to NXT and had already been through one version of himself that did not stick.
Lumis was released on April 24, 2026 with the rest of the Wyatt Sicks. His 90-day non-compete expired at the end of July and he is working again under his real name, Samuel Shaw, the one he used in TNA. He wrestled his first match back on July 25, tagging with Joe Gacy at an Atomic Legacy Wrestling show, and has since won the Destiny World Championship from Tarik at Battle Arts. The Insight sit-down was his first interview with a wrestling podcast since leaving.
