A special exhibition match took place last night on Dynamite between Cody Rhodes and QT Marshall with Arn Anderson as the special guest referee. Cody Rhodes mentioned in the past that he wouldn’t perform any “big moves” on QT out of respect for him. There was an instance in the match where QT wasn’t able to hit a crossbody on Cody, then what could have been out of frustration, punched Arn Anderson in the face and fled the ring.
Other members of the Nightmare Family, including Dustin Rhodes, Lee Johnson, and the Gunn Club rushed to the ring to help Cody tend to Anderson. As Dustin, Johnson, and the Gunn Club were looking at QT at the top of the rampway on the stage, three students from the Nightmare Factory namely Anthony Ogogo, Aaron Solow, and Nick Comoroto made their way down to the ring and attacked them.
Ogogo, Solow and Comoroto started a vicious assault and attacked a number of Nightmare Family members who were in the ring with chair shots, powerbombs and piledrivers. Comoroto threw Dustin on the stage and QT Marshall nailed him with a piledriver on the steel steps. Ogogo then nailed Cody with a closed fist strike directly to his midsection. QT Marshall then looked to hit Cody’s head with a chair shot, but retreated after Red Velvet came to Cody’s aid.
Even though the Nightmare Family never appeared as a traditional faction, they did support each other on occasion. Their most notable moment as a faction took place in February during Lee Johnson’s first AEW victory, but it seems that the tension and bad blood started there as immediately after the match Johnson thanked a number of the Nightmare Family members except QT Marshall.
Dave Meltzer previously noted that Cody had been studying the legendary feud between Bruno Sammartino and Larry Zbyszko, which saw Zbyszko turn heel on his mentor, Sammartino and that All Elite Wrestling will be using this feud as an inspiration for the upcoming rivalry between the Nightmare Family group and QT Marshall’s new faction.
You can check out highlights of the segment in the video below:
