AEW star QT Marshall recently joined the Dynamite Download podcast to discuss all things pro-wrestling, including his role at booking the company’s Youtube series Dark: Elevation and Dark, and how the Factory group came together on AEW programming. Highlights are below.
On Dark:Elevation and Dark:
I know what it’s like to be at TV and not wrestle. Luckily I have the behind-the-scenes where I’m busy and stuff but, I can’t imagine going to TV and just sitting around all day and doing nothing. You know, which is why we try to get away from that which is why sometimes [AEW] Dark is 25 matches long. We want everyone to work. It is what it is. We want you to wrestle. This is your dream and the happier you are, the better you’re going to do for us and the better the fans are gonna be and everyone wins.
On the Factory coming together:
So, a lot of it was — you know, basically, let’s put it this way: Tony [Khan’s] idea. Tony is a huge wrestling fan, so he knows a lot about wrestling and we all know The Nexus [from] WWE, that was a bunch of unknowns with one person they kind of built up, being Wade [Barrett] and one day we were just talking about it like, ‘Man, you’re partners with Cody and that’s cool. You have all of these students. Like who are your top students?’ We had already signed Anthony [Ogogo] and I was training him anyway. We were training him and he was really putting in the work and he has a lot — like you said, a lot of upside to him. [Nick] Comoroto had just gotten released from WWE, from NXT for whatever reason they did that and I’ve known him for such a long time. I mean he’s in The Wrestler movie. So, I had brought him in as an extra and he impressed because you know, he does what he does and so those were the two. The third one was the hard one and the reason being is I helped train Comoroto originally, same with Ogogo and that was our underlying thing of like let me find people I have trained. I had a bunch of other people that I thought could be in it, but [Aaron] Solo was somebody we were high on. We just didn’t know what to do with him, and I don’t have to teach him. Now, he did invest in himself and he flew himself here to Atlanta for a whole month, he lived in an Airbnb and he trained every night and we worked on promos and he was somebody — he wanted it, you know what I mean? And it was like, you can’t — at the end of the day, after you see that much… persistence, you’re like, you know what? Throw him a bone, let’s see what he can do and I don’t have to worry about him getting in the ring and not being able to perform. He knows how to wrestle. We just had to make people care about him in the right or wrong way so that was kind of — I remember Tony mentioning him and I said, ‘Well I didn’t train him’ and then he said, ‘Well, yeah you did. You’ve known him for a month, you did. So, maybe you’re the key to success. Maybe they come to you and you’re the one that opens the door for em’ and blah, blah, blah, blah and I said, ‘I love that idea. How do you think we go about it?’ And obviously things worked out the way they did.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)