QT Marshall Discusses His AEW Exit & Return, What His Role Entails

QT Marshall opened up about his exit from AEW and return to the company plus more in a new interview. Marshall made his return to the company this month after departing at the end of last year, and he spoke with Bill Apter for Sportskeeda about the whole thing. You can check out some highlights below (h/t to Fightful):

On his AEW exit: “I had given my notice (right before All In) that I was going to leave and go wrestle, and I had other things I wanted to do. Tony [Tony Khan] and I spoke, and he said, ‘Why don’t you stay? Maybe I can do something with you more as the Triple A Latin American Champion.’ ‘Yeah, sure.’ I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had spoken to Scott D’Amore at IMPACT and maybe I was going to do something for them. Tony was very understanding towards all of this stuff. I signed this extension and it came to the end of the year. Tony and I spoke a little about stuff, and my biggest thing was I didn’t want to sign a long-term contract but because of that, I had to resign from the job itself. I couldn’t do one or the other.”

On potentially joining WWE: “Tony and I have spoken numerous times about this. I’m not going to WWE just to be a producer. I can do that at AEW, where I can work one day a week, and I’m number whatever in the company, in the top ten, where as, 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 [Cody Rhodes] and just to say that I work for WWE, which has been my dream since I was eight years old, but it’s not my dream to be a producer for WWE. I did speak to them, and we don’t know what could happen. Ideally, I’m back to AEW under an employee role.”

On making his AEW return: “I flew down to Jacksonville to talk to Tony in December, first week of January, maybe. I was talking to him and explaining that I wanted to do like Turnbuckle (Championship Wrestling). I could go on the indies and wrestle all the time and go from Massachusetts on Friday, San Diego on Saturday, and somewhere else on Sunday. I could do that and I might do that because that’s a benefit I have working with AEW. That’s the biggest thing; freedom. Freedom and great pay, which I’ve earned. I did step away, and the direction AEW was going in at that moment when I was there and Tony and I had our discussion, which would have been in Oakland on November 10th. That’s when I spoke to him and let him know I would be staying home. It’s not like I put out a statement in November and that was the first time anyone had heard about it, I had been sitting at home for weeks.

“Tony and I have a different relationship than many people do. Him and I, we were in the trenches together during the pandemic and up until seven AM writing shows. I don’t go on the internet and argue with people. I know what I’ve done and what my job consists of. I never once wrote TV for other people or myself. I did my job that I was told to do. The greatest conflicting story to me was, ‘QT wanted to be on TV all the time and wanted to be a big star.’ Okay, so why would I do QTV and be Will Hobbs’ manager if I had a dream of being a humongous TV wrestling star? I did what I was told to do. I believe, and I’ve always instilled in our students, to do your job and be great at your job, and whatever they give you, try to do your best at it. If it’s not a home run anytime, it is what it is By the end, when I was about to exit, I wasn’t doing as much because we had Jimmy Jacobs come in. I would go to work with Tony, bounce ideas, and I give my opinion, but at the end of the day he’s the boss. I think, more or less, this is what this is about. He understood where I was coming from. Could I 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, but why do something else when I know this extreme and I’m comfortable? We probably agreed to everything probably six weeks ago. I haven’t left my house since. That’s been part of the idea, because of all the other stuff I have going on, how can we help each other?”

On his current AEW role: “I’m back to the old position, Vice President of Creative Coordination. A lot of it is dealing with talent. It’s getting the talent ideas to Tony. There is a lot of talent, they all have ideas. To me, if I wasn’t going to go to WWE and wrestle…when I spoke to them, it was a three-four minute conversation and they asked me what I wanted to do. I asked them what I would like to do, and we never got past that point. The guy that linked me up with them was like, ‘You’re already going back to AEW?’ Yeah, because I understand what I want to do, and what I want to do, even if I was a full-time in-ring talent at WWE, I couldn’t do all of this stuff. For everything I want to do, this is the best fit for me, unless something comes along and it’s the greatest opportunity and I can’t say no. Ideally, I’m not in that position, so it’s not something I think about.”