A tell-all from QT.
This past November, Q.T. Marshall released a statement to announce that he would be resigning from All Elite Wrestling. Fast forward to present day, Marshall rejoined the company.
He dove into his exit and return while speaking to Bill Apter of Sportskeeda WrestleBinge. Marshall’s original AEW contract was up in August 2023. He was able to reach a new agreement on a short-term scale. Prior to the extension, Marshall gave notice that he was leaving and it was Tony Khan who suggested that he stay.
Q.T. shared that he had talks with now-former TNA Wrestling President Scott D’Amore. Throughout this process, Marshall said Khan was understanding. His biggest point was that he did not want to sign a long-term deal. He went on to say that he feels he worked harder than most people at AEW. On the WWE front, Marshall said he would not go there just to be a producer and it’s more beneficial to him to be with AEW.
He felt the only upside to him going to WWE in comparison to being at AEW was that he’d get to be with Cody Rhodes. Marshall did talk with those at WWE. He closed by saying he’s back at AEW solely as an employee.
So right about August of (2023), my contract (with AEW) was coming up… Right before All In and I actually had given my notice then that I was gonna leave and I was just gonna go wrestle… I had some other things I wanted to do and then Tony (Khan) and I spoke and he was like, ‘Well, why don’t you stay and you know, maybe I could do something more with you as the AAA Latin American Champion and stuff.’ I said, ‘Yeah, okay, sure.’ Ideally, I didn’t know what I was really gonna do. I had spoken to Scott D’Amore over at IMPACT and maybe I was gonna go do something for them and Tony was very understanding towards all of this stuff. So I signed this extension and then came time for the end of the year and Tony and I kind of spoke a little bit about stuff and my biggest thing was I just didn’t wanna sign a long-term deal contract. That’s it. But because of that, I had to resign from the job itself, you know what I mean? Because I couldn’t do one or the other so it was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna resign. I have this idea to do Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling with Teil (Rhodes). I just have a lot of things I wanna do. I just kind of want to relax. I’ve been on the road five years straight’ and I mean, I’ve never publicly stated stuff but man, I worked harder than most people at AEW and if that ruffles feathers, I don’t care. I did. I busted my butt for them in hopes that maybe it would lead to more in the ring maybe. But they’re two separate things and when we spoke, Tony and I spoke about that. We both were on the same page about, hey, well, a lot of people think I left to become this big star. That’s not what it was at all.
Tony and I have spoken numerous times about this. I’m not gonna go to WWE just to be a producer. I can do that at AEW where I could work one day a week and I’m number whatever in the company in the top ten whereas if I go to WWE, I start at the bottom, I make less money, I’m on the road more. The only perk is that I get to be with my friend Cody (Rhodes), you know what I mean? And just to say that I worked for the WWE, which hey, it’s been my dream since I’m eight years old but it’s not my dream to be a producer for WWE. So, and I did speak to them and we don’t know what could happen. I mean, ideally, I’m back with AEW under just an employee role.
As far as why he decided to come back to AEW, Marshall cited freedom and great pay as reasons. Marshall shared that he had conversations with Major League Wrestling as well.
So, basically I flew down to Jacksonville to talk to Tony (Khan) in December maybe or maybe the first week of January? Something like that and I was just talking to him about stuff and explaining what I wanna do and you know, again, with the Turnbuckle (Championship Wrestling) stuff and I could go on the indies and wrestle all the time and go from Massachusetts on Friday to San Diego on Saturday, back to somewhere else on Sunday. That’s the indies, right? And I could do that and I might do that because that’s kind of the benefit that I have with working with AEW and that’s the biggest thing. There’s freedom. There’s freedom and there’s great pay, which I’ve earned. So it’s like, hey, I did step away and the direction AEW was going in, at that moment, when I was there, when Tony and I had our discussions which would have been in like Oakland, November 10th, that’s when I had spoken to him and let him know that I was gonna be staying home. So it’s not like the end of November, I put out a statement and that was the first anyone heard about it. I had been sitting home for weeks, and Tony and I, we have a very, very different relationship than many people do… He understood where I was coming from in the sense of like, could I go get a job at WWE? I’m sure. I spoke to MLW, I spoke to a bunch of places. I’m sure I could get a job somewhere.
His official title with AEW is Vice President of Creative Coordination which is the position he held prior to his resignation. Speaking about his chat with WWE, he said it was under five minutes long and did not get past the feeling out stage.
So I’m back to the same ole position, Vice President of Creative Coordination and a lot of it is dealing with talent. It’s getting the talent ideas to Tony (Khan) because if not, if we don’t have somebody like that — Sonjay’s good at that as well. There are other people but, there’s a lot of talent and they all have ideas and AEW is that kind of company that — and this is not just AEW. I think every wrestling company. If you come to the table with ideas, whether they’re good or bad, we can filter through and then make them better or just tell you, ‘Hey, that’s not a good idea. Go back to the drawing board.’ Fine-tune them a little bit. ‘No, you can’t work with that person because that person’s doing something with this person…’ and whatever and it works. But you need all those people there and we all have to be one big team and so on and so forth and like I said, just to me, if I wasn’t gonna go to WWE and wrestle, which, I mean when I spoke to them, I think it was like a three, four minute conversation and they kind of just asked me what I wanted to do and I told them what I would like to do and we never even got past that point. I remember the guy that kind of linked me up with them was like, ‘Wait, you’re already going back to AEW?’ I said, ‘Yeah, because I understand what I wanna do and what I wanna do –’ even if I was a full-time in-ring talent at WWE, I couldn’t do all this stuff. Of course that’s everybody’s dream to main event WrestleMania but at the end of the day, that takes a lot of work, a lot of passion, a lot of sacrifice and so on and so forth and for the other stuff that I wanna do and what I have going on with the school and all this stuff, I just think this is the best fit for me. Unless it’s something that comes along and it’s the greatest opportunity and I can’t say no. But ideally, I’m not in that position so it’s not something I think about.
While away from AEW, Marshall worked independent dates in New York, Florida and Georgia. He was present at the 2/24 Collision show. Marshall noted on X that he will not be wrestling at AEW.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Sportskeeda WrestleBinge with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
