DarkState Betray Saquon Shugars, Remove Him From The Group Following WWE NXT Tag Team Championship Match Defeat

Published: May 20, 2026 by Connel Rumsey | Last Updated: May 20, 2026 by Connel Rumsey

Connel has over five years of wrestling journalism experience writing about some of the biggest stories from across the wrestling world. Being a fan for 20 years, Connel has an expansive knowledge from a wide range of various wrestling promotions, including WWE, AEW, NJPW, TNA and Joshi.

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DarkState Betray Saquon Shugars, Remove Him From The Group Following WWE NXT Tag Team Championship Match Defeat

Saquon Shugars was removed from the DarkState faction following tonight’s WWE NXT Tag Team Championship main event.

The main event of tonight’s WWE NXT show saw DarkState attempt to capture their third NXT Tag Team Championship as a group, with them facing off with the Vanity Project.

However, where the group typically ran with Osiris Griffin and Saquon Shugars as the team, this match would see Saquon team with Dion Lennox due to recent tensions between the two.

In the match, the Vanity Project picked up the win after miscommunication between Saquon and Dion, which led to a big change following the match.

Saquon Shugars Removed From DarkState

Following the match, tensions continued to flair up between Lennox and Shugars, with Cutler James and Osiris Griffin stepping in to mediate.

However, James and Griffin would then jump Shugars, with Lennox joining in, before the three men all worked together to put him through the announce table, removing him from the group.

WWE NXT On The Road – A Big Positive For Developmental Talent

Ahead of tonight’s episode of WWE NXT TV in the Performance Center in Orlando, the brand was on the road this past weekend.

NXT had live events in Buffalo, New York; Canton, Ohio; and Johnstown, Pennsylvania on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

It isn’t abnormal for weekend live events to take place away from TV, but they’re usually held around Florida, with this amount of travel happening just a few times a year.

NXT going on the road a bit more often is something that Shawn Michaels himself requested when he was questioned by WWE President Nick Khan and CCO Triple H about why talent development seemed to be taking longer nowadays.

Michaels’ response was that with WWE developmental talent only really working in Florida, it’s a lot harder to gauge who and what is actually getting over on a bigger scale.

It’s one thing to become popular among the same group of fans at the Performance Center, but how does that translate across the rest of the country?

NXT going on the road like this presents a chance for talent to test out how their personalities and in-ring work are translating on a bigger scale – a very important part of the developmental process, hopefully leading to more NXT to main roster success stories like Oba Femi and Trick Williams in the future.