Wrestling stables are brilliant. They allow more roster members significant screen time, especially those not currently in the upper card or those still finding their feet in the promotion. AEW has quite a lot of them, in fact, with the likes of The Pinnacle, The Inner Circle, The Dark Order, The Elite, Team Taz, The Nightmare Family, and whatever it is that Matt Hardy is doing right now. Though recently it’s starting to look like we have another to add to the collection, this time headed by QT Marshall, and it’s looking awfully familiar.
What Happened?
The March 31st, 2021, episode of AEW Dynamite pitted QT Marshall against bestest-buddy-in-the-whole-world and Nightmare Family co-member, Cody Rhodes. The bout was scheduled as a wrestling exhibition between the two friends and was guest refereed by fellow stable member Arn Anderson.
QT displayed some heelish tendencies by viciously targeting the injured arm of Cody in a rather unsportsmanlike manner. Soon after, a turn fully came as he thwacked Arn Anderson around the head and rolled out of the ring. QT Marshall looked remorseful at first before fully solidifying the allegiance switch in an organized attack by members of his co-owned wrestling school, The Nightmare Factory -that being Anthony Ogogo, Nick Comoroto, and Aaron Solow. So now we have an outside invasion of rookies taking on the face of the company. I don’t know about you, but I feel like we’ve seen this sort of thing happen before -and it didn’t end well.
A Familiar Concept
Back in 2010 on WWE Raw, a mismatched bunch of ragamuffins stormed onto the set and started a mini revolution. The group in question became known as The Nexus, a collection of rookies from NXT’s first season. For those newer to WWE programming, think of it like the recently split Retribution, but not half-arsed and without the silly names.
Everything was going well for The Nexus as they made their way up the card by force, only for it to come crashing down at SummerSlam when Team WWE took on Team Nexus. Rather than having the Nexus go over and establishing them as the future, they were dispatched comfortably and almost single-handedly by John Cena. The stable didn’t really recover and as a result, we ended up with a year or so of David Otunga on commentary, it was a difficult time.
Now we have a seemingly similar concept to The Nexus in AEW. Assuming this is the way they’re going, we could likely see a feud build-up, culminating in a multi-man match at a pay-per-view down the line between The Nightmare Family and whatever this new stable is going to be called -probably something like The Marshall Family, The Fight Factory, or The Corre. Wait, not that last one.
So What’s Next For QT Marshall’s Stable?
Well, they could go the team warfare route, and by learning from the mistakes that WWE made with the Nexus, it could turn out rather well. After all, you have the likes of the infinitely marketable Anthony Ogogo and the absolute monster that is Nick Comoroto in QT’s ranks, so pushing this stable to the moon would seem like a clever move going forward -though you could’ve said that about the Nexus and look how that turned out.
The clever thing to do would be to build this feud in Nexus-esque fashion and have them go over the likes of Cody and Dustin. Why not establish this new team as a dominant force? They could then go on to do battle with any of the host of AEW stables, eventually, disband, and in the process, create a few new main-eventers. Though that’s assuming that this is the route they are actually planning on going.
It could also be a case of them just being there as QT’s backup -à la Wardlow with MJF- and it being a one-and-done affair between Cody and QT. Not that that’d be a good idea, however, as being the backup to QT in the same way as QT was seen as a backup for Cody wouldn’t position the new prospects as being that high up the pecking order. Then again, it worked for MJF and The Pinnacle so maybe that route might turn out just fine? Consider this, as much as stables were complimented earlier in the intro of this particular article, you do have to consider the possibility that there may be a few too many of them currently. The roster is already getting rather clogged as is, so pushing multiple new faces up the card is already rather risky.
They’ve already had to scrap one stable in the form of the Nightmare Collective, but then again, that might have just been because that team was a bit rubbish. The thing is, they’re going to have to go all out with this new QT Marshall led stable, or else it’ll likely just go the way of the Nexus; probably ending with Cody getting the ‘one, two, three’ at Double or Nothing to a chorus of boos. Alright, AEW, whatever you do decide to do, just make sure it isn’t that, OK?
