Anthony Bowens recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet about The Acclaimed, their signing with AEW, what he has learned from Billy Gunn, coming out to his friends and family, being an LGBTQ role model, and more.
Bowens on what it means to him to win the AEW Tag Team Championship:
“It means a whole lot. I mean, Max and I came into the company in October of 2020 and less than two years later, we’re on the top of the tag division. We’re on the top of the world. It’s a moment that I had been working for, obviously, I didn’t know I was winning the tag team titles, but winning a championship with a major company with all the hard work and all the sacrifices that went into becoming a professional wrestler and getting to this level. To have that moment, it’s awesome. It’s cool.”
Bowens stated that the portrayal of himself and Max Caster on AEW is true to their personalities:
“I don’t think we’re characters. I think we are who we are. Caster is a rapper. Caster likes to push buttons. Whatever you see on television, that’s Max Caster. For me, like obviously I don’t run around town screaming, ‘The Acclaimed have arrived.’ But there’s a part of me, there’s all different parts that make up Anthony Bowens, and by nature, I am an introverted person. I’m kind of like the guy leaning on the wall at a party observing as opposed to being the center of attention. But there is a part of me that is, I guess, crazy, and I unleash that part of me when we have our entrance and Max is rapping and I just let loose and have fun. So I think everything you see is authentically us which is the reason why it’s resonating so well with people.”
The Acclaimed were instructed to give an edgy performance:
“Well, we try to toe the line as best as we can because obviously, there’s a line that you can cross sometimes. But we like to be edgy. The only other direction we were given was to be edgy because there was a missing element to that, I guess, on the program. So they wanted this presentation that had a little edge to it. So we took it almost literally.”
If Max Caster tells anyone what he’s going to say:
“No, and that’s the beauty of it because we want authentic reactions. If he says something snippy and you get pissed, you get that camera shot that makes the match so much better because this guy is pissed at what he said. So we try to make sure that whoever is listening is not around us and we don’t want them to hear anything.”
On how he came up with the phrase “Scissor me Daddy Ass,” he says:
“Billy has been a big part of our presentation. Honestly, that whole dynamic we had with him and his kids was the perfect storm to lead to everything that happened because I was hurt at the time. Caster was just having singles matches. We fluctuated back and forth between TV and Dark. The same thing was happening with The Gunn Club.”
“I’ll be honest with you, before they ruined everything and they became selfish pieces of sh*t, we were pretty good friends with The Gunn Club. We had a good dynamic. We had a good rapport. We would hang out before the show and laugh about the most ridiculous of things. Caster was the one that said, ‘Hey, I think we should do something with these guys. I don’t know what’, because we were having so much fun together.”
“One day I was sitting on the beach very relaxed and I just came up with this way to put us together and I needed a reason to be on television with my injury. We could do this thing where we all come together. We can do it on Dark, it doesn’t matter. We just want to do something and prove that we are useful to the TV show and that we can eventually be on Dynamite every single week. We started doing it and then the people loved it. They started picking up the dynamic between me and Billy pushing me in the wheelchair.”
“Then one day, it was probably about five minutes before we went out, I think it was a battle royal on Rampage, I was sitting in the wheelchair and I was giggling to myself because I was trying to figure out a way to end our entrance because Max would wrap, I would get the crowd to yell, Ass boys, but I didn’t have an ending. I just giggled to myself and I thought, ‘I think I’m just gonna say scissor me daddy ass.’ I don’t know why that pops into my head, but I started laughing, literally me sitting in the wheelchair in Gorilla laughing at it. I didn’t tell anybody. I think I told Billy that I think I’m gonna say, ‘Scissor me Daddy ass, and then hit me with the scissor.’ He didn’t say anything. I just remember he just smiled at me and he walked away, and that was it.”
“Five minutes later, I screamed it on Rampage. I came back. I looked around. No one said anything to me. It was like, okay, so I guess that was okay. Then it was trending and I started to see the signs and that’s when you know it’s caught on. It was like, I gotta say this every single week.”
Bowens stated that they attempted to secure Chuck Palumbo as Billy Gunn’s gift for the Daddy Ass Birthday Bash:
“I don’t like pulling the curtain too far back, but I will say that the Daddy Ass birthday bash celebration, I thought it would be a fun idea, and I did put together what you saw and the people enjoyed, but it was about maybe 30 or 40% of what I had originally planned. He (Chuck Palumbo) was going to be my birthday gift, but he wasn’t available.”
You can listen to the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
