QT Marshall has already won and proved he’s not just a hard worker behind the scenes, he can do it in the ring too.
Marshall was a guest on the Wrestling Perspective Podcast and talked about the pressure he faces ahead of his match with Cody Rhodes on AEW Dynamite this week. Marshall explained how he doesn’t want to lose the match and have his recent actions be for nothing, but at least he’s proven himself as someone people shouldn’t mess with.
“There’s a lot of pressure because the whole reason I did this, that I formed The Factory, and we’ve done this, is to get respect. At the end of the day, that’s literally what it was about. It was about getting the fans to realize that I’m not just Cody’s assistant. I’m not just Dustin’s partner. Like I’ve been training for this for 17 years, I’m good at this. Now I’m in a position where it’s live TV, it’s TNT, this is primetime TV stuff. The past two weeks I’ve been on,” Marshall said, “I read all the comments, people [saying] ‘oh we’re going to sleep, this is the sleeper match.’ Bullshit. Billy vs. me had the highest demo rating, the highest in the whole show. So screw you. Billy was a star, the storyline is great, I don’t care.”
“Wednesday’s gonna be no different. Wrestling Cody will be a little nerve-wracking because again if I don’t win, then all this stuff could be for nothing. But at the end of the day, too, I think I’m already winning. I’ve already won because I think the point has come across now that QT is someone that you don’t want to mess with. I never once for a million years thought I was gonna work behind the scenes. But it seemed like in 2019 when AEW first started,” Marshall explained, “that was the only way that I was gonna get my foot in the door. Cody needed an assistant, so that’s the biggest misconception about myself. When AEW started, I wasn’t presented two contracts. I was presented to be Cody’s assistant, and that was it.”
Read More: Shawn Spears On The Possibility That Peyton Royce & Billie Kay Could Join AEW
Marshall also spoke about coaching matches in AEW and being able to win over Chris Jericho after he produced his title match with Cody at Full Gear 2019.
“I do coach matches for the younger talent, Jungle Boy, these guys, or I give them ideas. And I let a lot of the other guys do it. But right now, like Dean Malenko was producing all of [Chris] Jericho’s matches. Well, Dean was in the crowd for Cody vs. Jericho. So Cody told Jericho, ‘hey, we’re gonna use QT.’ And I remember the look on Chris’s face like ‘what? We’re gonna do what?’ And then he wanted to come up with some ideas,” he explained, “and luckily I had been on the indies for so long, I had a good idea and it was like, ‘well if you put him in the Walls, you could stomp his head and that would make MJF throw a towel in because I’ve seen [Roderick Strong] do this’ and blah blah blah. And Chris was like, ‘Man, that’s a really good idea. You know what, you’re gonna be my agent from now if Dean’s not around.’”
“I’m also a producer on the other aspect, where I’m the bridge between the talent and production, right, because we use Keith Mitchell and his crew. So they’re not in our creative meetings, they’re not sitting there when we’re going over how these shots are going to look, so there has to be somebody to do all that, and in the beginning, it was me. And I’ve developed a relationship with them where I’m in the truck until about 7 o’clock at night on a live Dynamite show, going over everything,” Marshall said, “and then I put my working boots on, I go out there and wrestle, come back, [and] put the headset on. I just want to be a part of everything.”
RELATED: QT Marshall: ‘I’d Rather Be The Silent Guy That Just Does A Lot of The Stuff’
The full episode is available here:
