QT Marshall Reveals His Involvement With The Nightmare Factory Following WWE ID Deal

With the announcement by WWE that Cody Rhodes’ Nightmare Factory would be joining their ID scheme, questions arose over QT Marshall’s involvement with the school.

Marshall co-runs the school with Rhodes, but as a contracted AEW employee, his involvement with the school could be seen as a conflict of interest, with the WWE ID scheme signing certain indy talents and schools to be fast tracked to WWE.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated’s The Takedown, Marshall cleared up what WWE ID means for him, The Nightmare Factory, and his job in AEW:



"Tony (Khan) called me the day it was announced about other stuff, and he's like, ‘Hey, I just got to bring this up because I'm getting a lot of questions’," Marshall said. "And I was honest with him. I said, ‘Hey, I'll be honest with you, Tony, I didn't really know about this’. 

"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 l kind of sworn to secrecy type of thing, and I don't want to know. There's other stuff that's going on with the facility as well. The building that we're in is like two hours from Cody’s house. So maybe six months ago, I put the building up for sale and he was going to open up his own spot by his house that I would probably come by like once a week and train and do the same thing we were doing by me, but he wanted (the gym) to be closer to him because he does all these interviews, and he just wanted his own compound type place.

"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.'"

Marshall continued, noting what his day-to-day schedule looks like:

"I go to TV on Tuesday, I come home. Thursday, I go right to the school. Then over the weekend, we have Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling, where I'm wrestling for somebody else. And then we start on Monday, I have another day at the school, and then I travel again. So I just would like to try to enjoy my life a little bit while I still can. There was a lot that went into it. It was just all this timing, all at once. It was how it all happened. I know people have been tagging me on Twitter saying that AEW should release me from all ties because the school is affiliated with WWE. And I'm like, ‘Oh yeah, that's good but I don't think that's beneficial to anybody'. I understand because there's not enough information out there. That's the biggest thing. Because Cody put my name in his tweet. He said, ‘Did that harm you more than help you’? I said, ‘I'm fine. It doesn't do anything. I think the lack of information that press release kind of gives, no one understands it. I don't know what it means. 

"I just want to relax and figure out what else is there, and maybe find the passion for coaching againIt’s been a wild couple of days," Marshall said. "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."