Spears shared additional details about his comeback to WWE.
It was this past February that Shawn Spears made his return to WWE. In late 2023, he wrapped up with All Elite Wrestling and entered free agency.
Seven months have since passed and Spears dove into his comeback while chatting with Chris Van Vliet. Spears expressed that he’s confident he’ll retire in WWE and does not want to go anywhere else.
Maybe it’s human nature to always wonder if you made certain right calls at certain things as opposed to sitting back and going, eh, I did okay. Some things, I am. I know for certain, I am in the right spot, right now, in it with everything and all the time has gone by and all the decisions that I have made, I can say wholeheartedly that I am in the right spot, right now in WWE and NXT, and I am very confident to say that I will retire and finish everything here. I don’t wanna go anywhere else and that’s not a shot to anybody else. It’s just I feel that everything that has happened in my career, everything’s taken place in my life, as a human, as a performer, it is all led to be in this exact spot, sitting with you right now talking about how good things just happen to work out. Life is good.
Elsewhere during the conversation, he shared additional details about his comeback. Spears reached out to Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque and informed him that he was available.
Spears jumped on the opportunity to come back and said it was a no-brainer. He went on to add that he has responsibilities off-camera as well.
I immediately reached out to Hunter (that’s how the conversations between WWE & I started) and just said — I’m paraphrasing. I can’t remember exactly what I said. Just like, look, I’m free if there’s interest. The ball’s in your court kind of thing and he just says, ‘What do you wanna do?’ I said, ‘I want to contribute,’ and he said, ‘Okay. Let me see what can happen,’ and then not long after that, I was in touch with here and when this presented itself, the chance to come back here, I thought, hold on a second. So you’re telling me, I get to go back to a time frame, that was one of my favorites in my career. I get to be around a lot of the coaches that help kind of build me up to this point and I get to be under Shawn Michaels? I get to understand how he thinks? I get to work and see how he operates? And then I get to kind of pass that knowledge down to kids and I get to pass that on to students at Flatbacks? And I get to be in my bed every night? Like, yeah, let’s go, let’s do this. So it was kind of a no-brainer. Yeah, I jumped all over it.
Yeah (I’m doing more than what people see on-screen in NXT). My responsibilities are more than just what you see on-camera. So, I relish in that opportunity. I enjoy it, it’s a learning curve, it’s a lot. But, being on TV for as long as I have and being able to multitask on live television with 15 things happening at once that you have to be aware of, I feel that it’s helped me behind the scenes. Being able to adapt quickly and the best thing is I know what a lot of young talent are going through. So when they cease up or they panic or they have a great match and that excitement, I know all of those feelings so I’m able to kind of — when things go well, I’m able to kind of, ‘Hey man, yeah, enjoy this. Remember what this feels like, you know what I mean? Because there’s gonna be down-points and just remember, keep your eye on the prize’ and then when things don’t go well or when things are really hard or they’re in a tough spot mentally, I’m able to really understand. Because I’ve had a lot of down-points too, if we’re looking at in a totality type way. But I’m able to understand and put myself in those shoes and I’m able to kind of guide in the right way.
Prior to Spears’ return, when he was in WWE previously, he went by the name Tye Dillinger. Although that name holds weight with him, he’s very grateful to have returned as Shawn Spears.
It means a good deal to me (to leave WWE as Tye Dillinger & to come back as Shawn Spears). Not to take anything away from the Tye Dillinger thing, only because the way I got the name Tye Dillinger was pretty special to me so that, it holds a special place in my heart. I don’t know if I’ve ever explained this. Dillinger, I kind of came up with on my own, based on John Dillinger, the famous bank robber from back in the day, just public enemy number one, but loved by the public and that kind of stuff so, I always had a fascination with things like that and then Dusty, Dusty Rhodes was the one who gave me the name Tye. So, that name will always kind of carry a special weight to it. But, being away and going back to a name that I picked from a baby book way back when I was first starting out and being able to kind of put some weight behind it a little bit in terms of what I was able to do with that over the course of X amount of years. When I came back to WWE, it was presented as an option, which I’ve felt very, very grateful for. It was a conversation. It was like, ‘How would you like to proceed? Would you wanna go back here? Or do you wanna kind of hang on to this?’ And I just said, ‘Let’s hang on to this. Let’s see what we can do. Coming back, a fresh start, a fresh slate. Let’s see what we can do’ so it meant a lot that I had the option and yeah, we’re still building baby, still building. We’ll see.
On NXT TV, Spears has been engaged in some backstage interactions with Brooks Jensen. Spears was last in action in early July.
He got into a brawl with Malik Blade and Edris Enofe and has been sporting a sling. It was mentioned by Karmen Petrovic on an early September edition of NXT that she heard Enofe had to undergo shoulder surgery.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
