Summary

Trevor Lee recently looked back on his Haunted House of Terror match with Dexter Lumis at NXT Halloween Havoc 2020, calling it one of the more enjoyable projects he worked on during that stretch of his career.

Lee said the cinematic match stood out because it let everyone involved lean into a horror-movie presentation without losing all sense of realism. The bout eventually fed back into the finish of his later match with Lumis at the Capitol Wrestling Center, tying the broader story together.

Quote from Trevor Lee

Speaking on In The Weeds, Lee said:

"That was a lot of fun. Because that was the first time that I had done a cinematic-style match, if you will, where it was kind of shot like a movie. So that was also the first thing that Triple H was very hands-on with. He was very invested in that match and it not being super cheesy because it is a very campy idea. A very kind of cheesy idea.

But we were able to do it in a way that had some realism, if you will. Then, all of that accumulated back in the end in the CWC where the finish of the match happened with me and Dexter Lumis. It was so cool because Dexter Lumis... if you've ever seen any of his artwork, he's an incredible artist. So then you have to apply that to his imagination, his creativity as well. It was just such a fun process to be able to work through that together and make that, like, campy horror movie feel but also in a wrestling match. It was very cool to just step out the box and not have to worry about drop down, leapfrog, arm drag. How is Lumis gonna bust through this door and look like Freddy from whatever, right? I'm Jason Voorhees. I'm not a good horror guy. I got all their names wrong."

What The NXT Match Showed About Trevor Lee And Dexter Lumis

Lee's comments underline how much NXT was willing to experiment with presentation during that period, especially around Halloween Havoc. For Lee, the match gave him room to work outside a standard in-ring formula. For Lumis, it also played directly into the eerie character work that helped define his run in NXT.

That matters because Lee is not describing the match as a throwaway gimmick. He is describing a creative swing that connected back to the Lumis feud in the Capitol Wrestling Center, which helps explain why that match still stands out to him years later.

Sources

Trevor Lee while speaking on In The Weeds