Earlier this year, NXT spent weeks airing mysterious vignettes teasing a Superstar's debut, though no one expected it to be Shawn Spears. Once known as "The Perfect 10" Tye Dillinger in NXT and WWE, he left the company in 2019 after asking for his release.
As was so often the case with NXT Superstars, Vince McMahon didn't "get" Spears' gimmick and he subsequently slipped down the card. Making his AEW debut, Spears turned heel when he attacked Cody Rhodes with a steel chair, inadvertently busting his head open and earning himself "The Chairman" nickname.
Unfortunately, with Tony Khan signing as many new wrestlers as possible, Spears struggled to stand out from the crowd and found himself facing poor booking.
Now part of the NXT roster - and still going by Shawn Spears - he's found a place for himself in WWE (both behind and in front of the camera) that he seems happy with.
Talking to Chris Van Vliet, he addressed his WWE return, and the fact he got to keep his name, in detail.
"It means a good deal to me. 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 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 have a fascination with things like that. Then 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 grateful for. It was a conversation. It was like, how would you like to proceed? Would you want to go back here, or do you want to 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."
As for why he left AEW, Spears put it down to "wanting to contribute a little bit more, both in front of the camera and behind the camera." Refusing to say anything negative about Tony Khan, he described his time in the company as "wonderful" and reiterated that his departure boiled down to needing more than they were willing to give him.
Spears then talked about returning to WWE and how the whole thing came about.
"I immediately reached out to Hunter and just said, I am paraphrasing, I can’t remember exactly what I said, just I’m free if there’s interest, the ball’s in your court kind of thing. He just says, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to contribute.’ And he said, ‘Okay, let me see what can happen.’ Then not long after that, I was in touch and when this presented itself, the chance to come back here, I go '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. Then I get to kind of pass that knowledge down to kids, and I get to pass that on to students at Flat Backs, and I get to be in my bed every night. Yeah, let’s go. Let’s do this. So it was kind of a no brainer. I jumped all over it."
You can watch the full interview with Spears in the player below.