Poor Rampage Ratings Led To Creation Of AEW Faction

Historically low ratings for AEW Rampage ultimately led to the creation of a new faction in All Elite Wrestling. 

QT Marshall has led the QTV faction for the past several months since he helped Powerhouse Hobbs win the TNT Championship on the March 8 edition of AEW Dynamite. While Hobbs has since quit the stable, QTV still consists of Johnny TV, Aaron Solo, Harley Cameron, and, of course, QT Marshall. 

Marshall was the latest guest on Talk Is Jericho and QT revealed that Tony Khan decided to scrap his previous group, The Factory, and find something new for Marshall after QT main evented an episode of Rampage that struggled hugely in the ratings. 

"We did an episode of Rampage that was the lowest-drawing Rampage of all time. I was (in the main event). I will say this, the main event did really well, but it was just overall, a very poorly-rated Rampage and Tony (Khan) called me. He said, 'Hey, I think you're not presented as a huge star and then you're not leading a bunch of stars so maybe it's time to disband. Let's come up with a new idea.' And someone pitched 'Just Joe', from WWE, you know? So I was like, ah man, I don't wanna be another joke. I wanna do something fun," Marshall began.

"I just said, 'What can we come up with?' And then Tony said, 'Have you ever seen the movie Popstar?' And I said, 'No.' He said, 'Well if you look at it, they make fun of TMZ...' So he showed me the clip and he loved the clip and I said, 'Okay' and this was all supposed to be, at the end, the payoff was going to be that it was all good stuff about Will Hobbs. We bury everybody else and it would end up that I was with Powerhouse Hobbs. That's what was supposed to start," QT continued.

"But then when the Wardlow match happened, everything just kind of got... It was Hobbs vs. Wardlow in Hobbs' hometown, in San Francisco so it was like, 'What do we do?' And then it was kind of, 'QT! We're gonna put you with him now.' I was like, 'Okay. Yeah, let's do it,' you know? So then we had to kind of go backwards and (Aaron) Solo's always been Solo so he's someone I can count on, he's professional, and when we originally thought about using the other guys, it was like, 'We need a female. Who can we get?' And a couple names came up and I spoke to a couple of different people and I just remembered Harley (Cameron) from doing Dark and the music stuff and I was like, man, she just seems like a lot of personality. So I talked to Tony and Tony was like, 'Yeah, let's give it a shot' so we were gonna film a bunch of vignettes and just without any contracts or anything like that and then all of a sudden, this thing just happened so it was like, 'Hey, you start on TV next week.'"

While Marshall did not explicitly state which episode of Rampage led to The Factory being scrapped, he did main event the December 2, 2022 episode of the Friday night show. The 38-year-old unsuccessfully challenged Orange Cassidy for the All-Atlantic Championship in a Lumberjack Match to close out the show. 

The December 2 episode only drew a 0.08 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, which was the lowest rating Rampage had ever averaged in the demo. 

H/T to POST Wrestling