Trust me, I don’t know how it happened either. Anywho, I got to talk to Anthony Bowens of The Acclaimed in the build-up to this weekend’s Revolution PPV. Very cool!
This Sunday is AEW Revolution, although here in Australia it’ll be airing on Monday at 12:00 p.m. AEDT. The card consists of the following: a World Championship 60-minute Ironman Match between MJF and Bryan Danielson; a Texas Deathmatch between Jon Moxley and Hangman Page; a TNT Championship Match between Samoa Joe and Wardlow; a Women’s World Championship Match between Jamie Hayter, Saraya, and Ruby Soho; a World Trios Championship Match between The Elite and House of Black; and a regular ol’ match between Ricky Starks and Chris Jericho (where The Jericho Appreciation Society will be banned from ringside).
As well as all these beat ’em ups, there’s going to be a truly rowdy four-way tag-team match for the Tag Team Championship between The Gunns (Ass Boys), The Acclaimed, Jeff Jarrett & Jay Lethal, and Danhausen & Orange Cassidy (Orangehausen). That is simply so many boys in one single wrestling soup, I have no idea where I’m going to be looking. Nonetheless, it’ll be a real riot.
So to celebrate this big boy tussle, Anthony Bowens of The Acclaimed agreed to speak with me about the upcoming fight as well as his relationship with gaming. I thought that I’d be done for after calling the last three wrestlers I talked to ‘nerds’, but it seems that was actually very encouraged and cool for me to do.
In order to get Bowens nice and comfy, I decided to go for something topical: his upcoming match in AEW Revolution. For good measure, I also referred to Jeff Jarrett as ‘Jay Lethal’s elderly friend’ and that got a good laugh out of Bowens. Apologies to Jeff Jarrett, it’s all just jokes here.
“All we care about is beating the absolute crap out of the Ass Boys and getting those AEW World Tag Team Titles back,” Bowens says of the upcoming fight. “I think Max [Caster] and I have proven that it doesn’t matter who you put in front of us, whether that be one of the best tag teams ever in FTR, whether it be Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal, we’re going to do our best to make sure that we come out on top and we’re going to kick their ass.”
Now it’s common knowledge nowadays that everybody loves The Acclaimed. However that hasn’t always been the case, with the ‘everybody loves The Acclaimed’ slogan initially being tongue-in-cheek due to disdain from fans in the beginning. When talking about what it felt like for them to have everybody actually loving The Acclaimed, Bowens knew that “at some point, people would start to appreciate what we were doing”.
“With the entertainment that we’re bringing to the television screens every single week, did I know that would go to this level so quickly? No, probably not.” Bowens says. “But a lot of that had to do with the chemistry Max, myself and Daddy Ass [Billy Gunn] have, and his presence with us every single week on TV with the scissoring and his mentorship has just been a beacon of light for us. You know, it just became a perfect combination and a perfect storm. And it’s led to where we are today.”
The scissoring. The second Bowens mentions the scissoring, I know I have to ask about it. When I first saw The Acclaimed start to ‘scissor’ in AEW, I… I snorted, honestly. Wrestling has always had a way with somehow mixing the goofiest shit with seriously impressive athletic performances, and the scissoring of The Acclaimed sent me over the edge. I had to ask about it, and so I did.
“So back in, I guess it was in the very, very early origins of The Acclaimed, Max and I were trying to just figure out stuff like who we are and what our on-screen presence was, because we were being ourselves but at the same time, it was all over the place. We had the chemistry but we’re working on catchphrases and hand symbols and all this other kind of stuff and you know, we had the A symbol and I threw it up on one of the Dark tapings and Max, who also likes to be very, very playful sometimes, came from behind and he scissored me and I was like, ‘What are you doing? I don’t think we can do that.’”, Bowens says.
He continues, “We did it a couple more times, they told us to stop, and then for whatever reason we were just like, ‘This is fun.’ And we kind of got rebellious and we just went back to doing it after a while and nobody said anything and then once at one match was I was laying on the floor. I looked up and the whole first row had their fingers out like ‘Scissor!’. And that’s when we knew we were on to something. Then the signs started coming, people start making custom scissors, and then we united with Billy and ‘scissor me daddy ass’ came about and then it just absolutely took off. Now it’s a sign of friendship, I scissor people in the streets, I scissor people in the airports. I have scissored people everywhere. It’s insane.”
And now it’s time to talk games.
Ok I’m done for the night pic.twitter.com/hK4fLDLUAC
— Anthony Bowens (@Bowens_Official) July 29, 2022
I knew that Bowens was a Nintendo 64 boy, and there were some absolutely classic wrestling games on that beautiful console. I decided to ask him about the wrestling games he loved of the Nintendo 64 era, and he mentioned that he was a regular player of WCW/nWo Revenge, often playing Buff Bagwell and favouring the blockbuster move.
“I have so many memories with those games, just playing it for hours and hours and hours and hours.”, he says. “So that makes me very excited for the upcoming game, AEW Fight Forever, that hopefully comes out soon considering that it’s like a modern day version of No Mercy. I think people are going to be really, really excited when they play it. I happen to get my hands on it a little bit a couple of months ago and it’s very, very fun.”
It was brave of me to even try, but I asked Bowens if there was anything else he could tell us about AEW Fight Forever. He gave me a sympathetic “no!”, and we had an understanding laugh. You don’t know until you try!
And finally, I had to ask him about his gaming interests outside of just the titles that influenced his occupation. This may or may not surprise you, but Anthony Bowens is a MLB The Show fan, adding that he’s “very excited for the new one to come out”. I also asked what he’s been playing recently, which you can hear on The Kotaku Australia Podcast (this is truly the most shameless plug).
“I’ve been playing a lot of Warzone with my friends, and Fortnite. I also just bought a PS5 and repurchased The Last of Us 2. The Last of Us is one of my two favorite video game franchises of all time, so I had to buy it again, and play it again. So I’m gonna start that soon. And then also I love Grand Theft Auto, it’s one of my favorite franchises of all time, so hopefully Grand Theft Auto 6 emerges sometime soon, it’s been forever. But I’ve still been having fun with Grand Theft Auto 5.”
If you’d like to see Anthony Bowens and Max Caster throw down against the Ass Boys, Jay Lethal & Jeff Jarrett, and Orangehausen, you can catch AEW Revolution this coming Monday on March 6th on FITE.tv.
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