Brandi Rhodes Reveals How The Nightmare Collective Was Formed In AEW
It wasn't the original plan...
Over the past few weeks, AEW teased that the Nightmare Collective would be disbanding. Short clips of leader Brandi Rhodes visiting a therapist aired on social media, Mel and Luther turned on Awesome Kong on last week's episode of Dark, and on the February 5 edition of Dynamite, Brandi made her way to the ring to support Cody without her Nightmare Collective attire.
Yesterday, Rhodes confirmed on Wrestling Observer Live that the storyline was indeed over and that she had chosen to disband the faction because she was not happy with how the group was progressing on TV and neither were the fans.
In the same interview, Brandi also explained how the stable was created. She revealed the original plan was for her to just manage Awesome Kong and help present her new trophy collecting character. Brandi, however, noticed that Kong "was not physically feeling great" and so to limit her in-ring action, they decided to create the group.
Brandi said: "The Nightmare Collective became the Nightmare Collective. There was no original ‘Hey lets do a Nightmare Collective’ where we have all of these people and they're doing all of these things. There was never that. The original thing was supposed to be myself and Awesome Kong. Me managing Awesome Kong. Awesome Kong came to me with an idea of wanting to change her look and kind of her vibe with being an assassin of sorts. A really big competitor, a huge threat to the women’s division and she had this idea of wanting to cut hair as a trophy to keep.
"Unfortunately you can layout a huge trajectory of things that you want to do and sometimes things just happen that don’t allow that to happen, and one of the things was I noticed was that Awesome Kong was not physically feeling great, and she’s my friend so I would never want to ask somebody to work in a capacity where I know they're going to hurt themselves. So what then happened was more of a greater group discussion…and the Nightmare Collective came to be."
Yesterday, Rhodes confirmed on Wrestling Observer Live that the storyline was indeed over and that she had chosen to disband the faction because she was not happy with how the group was progressing on TV and neither were the fans.
In the same interview, Brandi also explained how the stable was created. She revealed the original plan was for her to just manage Awesome Kong and help present her new trophy collecting character. Brandi, however, noticed that Kong "was not physically feeling great" and so to limit her in-ring action, they decided to create the group.
Brandi said: "The Nightmare Collective became the Nightmare Collective. There was no original ‘Hey lets do a Nightmare Collective’ where we have all of these people and they're doing all of these things. There was never that. The original thing was supposed to be myself and Awesome Kong. Me managing Awesome Kong. Awesome Kong came to me with an idea of wanting to change her look and kind of her vibe with being an assassin of sorts. A really big competitor, a huge threat to the women’s division and she had this idea of wanting to cut hair as a trophy to keep.
"Unfortunately you can layout a huge trajectory of things that you want to do and sometimes things just happen that don’t allow that to happen, and one of the things was I noticed was that Awesome Kong was not physically feeling great, and she’s my friend so I would never want to ask somebody to work in a capacity where I know they're going to hurt themselves. So what then happened was more of a greater group discussion…and the Nightmare Collective came to be."
Written by Aidan Gibbons
Editor-in-Chief of Cultaholic.com Twitter: @theaidangibbons
