QT Marshall felt ‘rubbed the wrong way’ by meeting with WWE earlier this year

QT Marshall met with WWE earlier this year and says he felt “rubbed the wrong way” by the experience.

During an interview with Sports Illustrated, Marshall spoke about his brief period of free agency from late November 2023 to early 2024, noting that he knew quickly into his WWE meeting that it was not the place he wanted to be.

“I had one conversation with somebody that doesn’t even work there anymore,” Marshall said of WWE. “I just got rubbed the wrong way during the conversation. It was like, ‘Hey, yeah, oh yeah, that’s great. All right. And I told him, like, yeah, all right, we’ll stay in touch’. To me, it was like I’m not staying in touch.”

Marshall’s return to AEW in an executive role was announced on February 14, 2024.

Along with Cody Rhodes, Marshall opened The Nightmare Factory in 2020. Recently, the school was one of five designated as an official member of the new WWE ID program. However, Marshall says he doesn’t know anything about WWE’s deal with the school, and decided months ago he would be taking a break from coaching regardless.

Marshall said of The Nightmare Factory’s involvement with WWE:

“Cody had spoken to me about potentially signing over the intellectual properties and stuff, and he said he was doing something related to WWE but kind of sworn to secrecy type of thing, and I don’t want to know.”

“When Cody explained it to me, he was very smart about not putting me in the press releases. He didn’t want any kind of drama for me. And I told Tony, Cody has his own camps. It’s always been like that where I’ve been a coach but these are his camps. These are all his kids. They’re from scratch. I’ve always trained people for the most part in a night class with Billy Gunn. And before Billy, it was just myself. But I like more of the experienced guys and girls, whereas Cody likes to get them when they’re like brand new. So it was a little weird at first when he went to WWE.”

“Now, I mean, of course that the WWE is involved, I don’t understand what is going on. I didn’t look into it as much. The reason I want to look into it is because I have every single student we’ve ever had has been messaging me, but I don’t know the answer. So I don’t know what their whole deal is, what that involves. I read the press release as well.”

“But I know when I spoke to Cody like, ‘Hey, you’re going to be doing your own thing. Maybe I could run a night class in there if we lose the building here, if we sell the building and stuff. But obviously, with AEW and the conflict of interest, I’m probably not going to be a part of this thing. He’s like, ‘Yeah, of course, that makes perfect sense, stinks because you are 50 percent of the Nightmare Factory. More than 50 percent because of the coaching that you bring. But at the end of the day, of course, if it’s going to make any kind of difficulty at work, you know, and that’s the biggest thing’.”

“I didn’t really know what was going on. And I understand from Cody’s point of view. He’s sworn a kind of secrecy and stuff because, who knows if maybe it’s such a cool thing that they’re doing that we would have wanted to jump on it. I don’t know. Cody and I, we just have more of a friend relationship than professional at this point.” 

Marshall wrestled at the last Nightmare Factory Showcase event on October 20, 2024. He teamed with Joey Z and Raegan Teal in a win over Cole Klein, Isis Reade, and Kevin Cox. Three days later, he wrestled a dark match for AEW, losing to Manny Lemons.