Anthony Bowens recently spoke with Phil Lindsey of Sportskeeda and discussed The Acclaimed, his run with All Elite Wrestling and more. Here are some highlights.
On signing with AEW:
Bowens: “Honestly, I’d been gunning for AEW for a very, very long time. Once the company opened up, I felt like this is where I needed to be. Just didn’t know how to get there.”
“From what I understand I was supposed to be at the Newark Blood and Guts show right before the pandemic hit. I got the phone call that I was booked to be there and then 30 minutes later, I went on Twitter and I saw all the shows had been canceled.”
“And then a similar thing happened when I was supposed to come down in June, but then the numbers picked back up again. And then finally I was able to get down here in the beginning of October, end of September, and I did well enough that Tony Khan ended up offering me a contract. I had two options, and this was the place that I needed to be. I felt like my heart was here at AEW.”
On The Acclaimed:
Bowens: “So I had no idea any of this was happening. I had been given the offer, and I was flying down to meet Tony Khan and the day of, I was in the elevator and then Max Caster walked in. And I was like, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ And he was, ‘Well what are you doing here?’ And it turns out that we were in a pretty similar situation where we both had options on the table, and we ended up going in to speak to Tony together, and he laid out the plan that he had for us.”
[It was] scary because I hadn’t done tag wresting, like legitimate tag team wrestling, in maybe like six years. So I had been solely focused on a solo act, a solo career, so going into a tag and relearning that psychology, plus with somebody who, I’ve only wrestled Max, I’ve known him for a while, but only in passing or [saying] hello at shows. I’ve only I think wrestled him once and it was in a six-way scramble match or something. So relearning that psychology, trying to learn a brand-new tag partner as a person, as in-ring competitor, it was scary. But we went out there, and I think we killed it against Best Friends and that’s what really cemented us as a tag.”
On the growing LGBTQIA+ presence in wrestling:
Bowens: “There’s work to be done but I think we’re moving in the right direction. I mean, like a couple weeks ago on Dark, I think there was something like five openly LGBTQ athletes on the card, and to me that’s amazing. That just didn’t happen years ago.”
If you use any portion of this transcription, please credit Colin Tessier of WrestleZone.com
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