"What happened is really what fans saw. He tweeted about me (in August 2020) and didnt, I don't think, particularly know me. He just knew he had a show on TNT and we had seen each other at the upfronts and 'Dynamite' was kicking ass and I think he chose an in-house professional wrestler to pick on," Rhodes explained. "And I didn't think much of it other than, you know, us wrestlers, we love when we see the blue (Twitter) checks, we love when we see people talking about our world. Then the next you know, QT (Marshall) calls me like half a year ago, so this is a while ago. He called me and said, 'Hey, I just want to make you aware of something.' When that's how he frames it, I know it's going to be something about the Nightmare Factory. He said, "I just want to make you aware of it that Shaq came in and started training. I said, well send me a video, I've got to see it. He's done a good amount of training with QT with a couple bodies there that he can throw around and things of that nature," he continued. "Right at that moment, I knew we were into an area where this could really, seriously happen. We really jumped on it in the best way we could. QT is really technically responsible for that. He and (AEW president) Tony Khan because he and Tony have a great relationship as well. It kind of willed itself into existence like so many other things in AEW."