QT Marshall recently spoke with Bill Apter of SportsKeeda’s “Wrestle Binge” for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the AEW executive spoke about talking with WWE after parting ways with AEW, as well as why he ultimately decided to re-sign with AEW.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On how he did speak to WWE after parting ways with AEW: “Tony and I have spoken numerous times about this. Iโm 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 Iโm number whatever in the company in the top ten whereas if I go to WWE, I start at the bottom, I make less money, Iโm 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, itโs been my dream since Iโm eight years old but itโs not my dream to be a producer for WWE. So, and I did speak to them and we donโt know what could happen. I mean, ideally, Iโm back with AEW under just an employee role.”
On AEW offering him creative freedom and good money being why he ultimately re-signed with them: “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. Thatโs the indies, right? And I could do that and I might do that because thatโs kind of the benefit that I have with working with AEW and thatโs the biggest thing. Thereโs freedom. Thereโs freedom and thereโs great pay, which Iโve earned. So itโs 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, thatโs when I had spoken to him and let him know that I was gonna be staying home. So itโs 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 doโฆ He understood where I was coming from in the sense of like, could I go get a job at WWE? Iโm sure. I spoke to MLW, I spoke to a bunch of places. Iโm sure I could get a job somewhere.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to POSTWrestling.com for transcribing the above quotes.