Dexter Lumis says Paul Heyman was pushing to have him repackaged as a singles wrestler in the closing stretch of the Wyatt Sicks run, and that his 2026 WWE release feels more final than the one he had in 2022.
Lumis told Chris Van Vliet on Insight that he had been putting in work backstage beyond what he was booked for, and pushed back on the assumption that released talent were coasting.
“The joke that, oh, they just sit in catering and they collect a paycheck. That’s not me. I’m not there for that,” Lumis said. “I walked around the building all night and I talked to important people and picked veterans’ brains, and I was talking to Paul Heyman quite a bit, who I respect the hell out of, and I was getting some great advice from him.”
He said one piece of that advice was specific.
“One of the things he was saying was like, we need to make you a singles guy. And this was very late, towards the end of the Wyatt Sicks run,” Lumis said. “I almost felt like something was brewing, but I just didn’t think the whole group’s going to be released.”
Lumis said the surprise was less that his own name came up than that all five did.
“I was a little surprised, just because I felt like I was doing the necessary things outside of just being booked and brought to TV every week,” he said.
He drew a general lesson from it. “I guess that’s the problem. You can’t ever feel like you’re safe, especially in this tumultuous business,” Lumis said. “So I’m always looking for how can I better myself? What do I need to do to get to that next level?”
The 2022 release came under different management, and Lumis said the difference is who was making the decisions. He said the first exit came in the middle of upheaval in NXT.
“I think the first release was there was a lot of shakeups going on in NXT, and Triple H, who I considered my boss back then, he went down with a heart issue, and then it just seemed like a Vince McMahon overhaul happened in NXT,” Lumis said. “We went from black and gold to this splatter paint 2.0, very bright, and John Laurinaitis is down there every week and keeping tabs on talent.”
He said he refused to let the change in oversight rattle him.
“I’m not gonna feel the way I felt when I was an extra trying to get his attention every week. I’m a man now. I’ve had success at this place, and I’m going to continue to have success at this place,” he said. “Doesn’t matter if there’s a regime change. Doesn’t matter if that guy’s somewhat in charge now. I’m going to do my thing.”
That release came in April 2022. Lumis was back on WWE television by that August, in the angle where he stalked The Miz.
Lumis was signed to WWE in his mid-30s, at a point when the older developmental system treated 30 as roughly the cutoff, and he credits Triple H with taking a different view of experience.
“I think Triple H understood. You don’t really get good at this, like really, really, really good, until you understand it fully. And you might need 15, 20 years in the business to understand that,” Lumis said. “And I’ve kept my body in shape, and I train hard. I can do athletic stuff. So why don’t you hire me? I have a lot to offer this company.”
He framed the current ownership differently. “Now I don’t know. I just feel like it’s different because TKO is, the bottom line is the dollar,” he said.
Asked directly whether this one feels more permanent, Lumis said it does.
“It does feel a little more final. You always hear the door could always still be open. Never say never. Those types of things,” he said. “But I feel like now, as opposed to back then, I got to go out and prove myself a little bit more.”
The two exits look different on paper as well as in his description. The 2022 release took him off television for four months. This one has taken him off it for four and counting, with no sign of a route back, and it came with the entire act rather than one name.
Lumis spent most of his WWE run in tag and faction work, holding the WWE Tag Team Championship with Joe Gacy from July 2025. He never held a singles title on the main roster, which is what makes the Heyman conversation sting. He was released on April 24, 2026 along with Bo Dallas, Nikki Cross, Erick Rowan and Gacy, as part of a post-WrestleMania 42 wave that also took in Kairi Sane, Aleister Black, Santos Escobar and the Motor City Machine Guns.
His 90-day non-compete expired at the end of July and he has been working since as Samuel Shaw, the name he used in TNA before WWE signed him in 2019. He wrestled his first match back on July 25, tagging with Gacy at an Atomic Legacy Wrestling show, and has since won the Destiny World Championship from Tarik at Battle Arts.
