Candid responses from Caster.
The newest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet was released and it featured an extensive interview with Max Caster of The Acclaimed.
There was a point in the conversation when Caster was asked about his comment on X that had to do with not wanting Shelton Benjamin in AEW. He went on to tell a story from his early days in AEW and Q.T. Marshall telling him that as a wrestler, he’d prefer if it Caster did not come in for an opportunity because it would be taking a spot. Caster called Marshall honest and said he respects him for that.
He went on to address AEW’s signing of free agents and bringing in talents who made their name elsewhere. He mentioned the likes of Benjamin and Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin). He said it’s not a specific issue with Benjamin and he respects him.
Caster feels ‘insulted’ when someone is signed because he feels he can fill the role and will feel that way until said person proves themselves. He stated that he was skeptical of Adam Copeland as well.
Because we don’t want him (Caster responded when asked why he made comment on X about Shelton Benjamin). What’s he gonna do? Take up my TV time? One thing I learned when I was getting signed to AEW, I got a call from Q.T. Marshall, who I love, I love and respect because he’s a great wrestler and he’s very honest. One of the most honest guys I’ve ever met, if not the most. He called me up and he’s like, ‘Tony wants you to come in.’ I go, ‘Is this a joke? I don’t know.’ He goes, ‘Look, I’m a wrestler. I’d prefer it if you didn’t come here and work because you’d be taking a spot that I want’ and I go, ‘Oh, that was some real sh*t.’ I respect that guy and ever since then, he’s always kept it on that level with me. So, I gotta keep it on that level with everyone else. Every single free agent that comes up in professional wrestling, fans wanna go, ‘They’d be great in AEW. They’d be great in AEW.’ We only have so much TV time. Some of that needs to go to me. I don’t want all of it. I’m not selfish, but I’m the best. But if people start calling for Shelton Benjamin or Motor City Machine Guns or whoever, it doesn’t matter, and not to single anyone out. My sentiment is why would we want them? We already have the best roster, we already have the best wrestler alive. If you want anyone to come in and do whatever role they’re going to do, I bet I can do it better. I bet Anthony (Bowens) could do it better. I bet we have a guy on there that’s not even getting used on our roster that could do it better. So what are we really doing? We’re just bringing in stars that were made other places to do what? Less work ourselves? I’ll work for that. If you want me to fill someone’s role, I can work and do that. It’s not gonna be overnight. It’s not gonna be, okay, Max is now this guy. No, but I could work there. It’s insulting to me as a veteran and a top wrestler and one of the most popular wrestlers that fans will go, ‘Well, we want this other guy now.’ Why? You have the best. Literally the whole roster. You have the top of wrestling.
He’s okay (Caster said about Benjamin). He’s good. He’s good and he’s got a lot of accolades in his career. But, realistically, what does he bring to the table that, let’s say, Josh Woods couldn’t do? Who is a Heavyweight Champion NCAA wrestler.
No, no, not at all. Not at all (is this solely a Shelton Benjamin thing). I will say right here, great wrestler and I respect him a lot. But why would I campaign for anyone to join the company when we already have the best wrestlers? I’m here. Put me in that spot and it’ll be great. But if I’m gonna sit here and go, wow, yeah, we need more on this roster. We don’t… I’m insulted (when a wrestler gets signed to AEW). I really am. I wanna see them prove themselves and you know, talking about the people that we signed recently, I think Will Ospreay has proved himself. Give him all the credit in the world. He’s an amazing wrestler. (Kazuchika) Okada, I think once he’s situated in the country and he’s on TV every week, we will see. But that doesn’t take away from how great of a wrestler he is. He’s here, we gotta live with it. But, if you had asked me before we signed him, Max, do you think Okada should be here? I go, if you want but I could do that for you.
I think he’s (Adam Copeland) proven himself. He’s proven himself in AEW. I’ll be honest, when he was brought in, I was skeptical, because you go, he’s done so much. What else could he really wanna do? This is my company. Again, you’re stealing our TV time. But, he’s proven himself to be a leader and someone who’s gonna go out there and put in the work in the ring and pull guys aside and he’s pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, I saw your match. Here’s what I think’ and I go, ‘Thank you so much’ and I appreciate that. But, there’s a lot of guys who wouldn’t do that.
The conversation transitioned over to Caster’s raps that he does during The Acclaimed’s entrance. He does not think he’s gone too far with those but for a period of time, he had to run his lines past someone after he included a line about Olympic and World Champion gymnast Simone Biles’ mental health.
He added that it was the line about the 2006 Duke lacrosse sexual assault case that landed him in hot water. Three members of the lacrosse team were declared to have been falsely accused of sexual assault. Caster’s comment led to his suspension from AEW.
Ultimately, he thinks the suspension helped both him and Anthony Bowens. Caster shared that after the aforementioned lines, Warner Bros. Discovery got involved. He apologized to Bowens and Tony Khan.
No (I don’t think I’ve ever gone too far with my raps). There are raps that other people have thought I’ve gone too far on for sure. But, everything that I’ve ever said and done has led to my career being at this point right now and I can’t regret it. I’ve never walked out there and been like, eh, yeah, this is too far but I’m gonna say it anyway. I think it’s funny. Whatever I say, I think it’s funny. If it’s a bad joke, it’s a bad joke. It didn’t land, oops. You know, stand-ups, they work material out in front of a crowd. If it doesn’t land, they just go, whoops, okay, next joke. That one didn’t work. I kind of don’t have that luxury. If it’s really on the line, I’ll kind of walk around to different people that I trust and go, ‘What do you think of this?’ And if they really, really don’t like it, I might try and rework it. But, you know, I might also say it too.
For a time (I had to run my raps past people after the Simone Biles line) but that stopped pretty quickly. Of course, I wasn’t gonna go there again. It wasn’t even that line in that rap. It was the Duke Lacrosse, and that is a whole, to me, a gray area because it’s an accusation but a false accusation but it’s also referencing something that is very sensitive in the world which is sexual assault and I get it. It’s a very touchy subject. Probably shouldn’t have said it but in retrospect, how could I ever regret that? Because when I returned to TV, it was like a hero’s welcome. So why was I being rewarded for the most horrible thing that anyone’s ever said? We walked out, it was I believe Chicago and it was a Dark, I want to say 2021. Chicago, one of these shows before the pay-per-view and we walked out and it was, ‘Yeah! So happy you guys are back!’ Anthony had been wrestling singles matches in the time that I was away following that, and you could feel the energy just wasn’t in the room. As great of a wrestler as he is, if he kept going, it would have come together and people would get on board but, that’s the yin and yang of us is he’s gonna have the platform to do what he can do as long as I’m there and vice versa and I think we’ve closed the gap on each other. He’s become a great interview and I’ve become a more outstanding wrestler because I’m trying to focus more on that, not so much on the rap and we’ve kind of closed the gap and we’re becoming more one in the same. But, it helped. That suspension, that thing that I said, the outrage helped my career and Anthony’s career in turn.
It did (getting suspended helped my career). Say what you want. In the moment, people were really upset. I thought it was great, because I go, oh, well, I’ll just do some more like that. It was a little too far. Things got really, really touchy when the network starts calling and that’s what really did me in. Something had to be done and I agree with that. I’m cool with that. I only apologized to Tony (Khan) and Anthony Bowens and they both appreciated that and accepted that and we moved forward and when I came back, we figured out, you know, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I just read off a sheet of paper a corporately written rap?’ And we started doing it and the fans are booing and then we rip it up and they start cheering so, it’s like, this is what they want. They want me to be me. Everyone wants all the wrestlers to be themselves really, or extensions of themselves and I feel like I’m one of the only wrestlers who’s not afraid to be himself. I use my real name, my government name, you can look me up. I will say what I want to say, I’m okay with that, I’m okay with the consequences and we keep going but, our popularity speaks for itself.
Speaking about Anthony Bowens, Caster said he was the perfect sounding board for the raps but present day, they’ve gotten away from that.
Man, we would sit for a long time, especially when it was just me and Anthony (Bowens) before Billy (Gunn) had come on and we would just sit there and just throw lines back and forth and Anthony was my perfect sounding board. He would tell me, ‘Okay, too far.’ I go, ‘Okay, let me bring it back a little bit.’ He goes, ‘Okay, maybe try it this way’ and I go, ‘Okay’. So I would walk away and I would attack this line from a different angle, and then it would be perfect. So it was really collaborative. At a certain point, I think we kind of got away from that and we don’t talk about it as much and I would have to chase him down for whatever reason. He’s busy, he’s got his outside stuff or he’s getting warmed up for the match and I’m just sitting there like, God, we gotta attack these guys and, you know, we wrestle the same guys over and over. Hey, I need a new way to insult The Dark Order. We’ve wrestled them so many times, we’ll joke about it. They’re like, ‘I’d like to see what you come up with this time because I don’t know what you got left.’ I’ve killed all of ‘em so many times so, it’s a lot of thought and a lot of reading the news and what does this guy look like? What is middle America gonna find funny? It can’t be so niche that only I laugh at it, because that’s a lot of things for me. But, I watch Jimmy Fallon’s monologue, (Stephen) Colbert’s monologue. What are these people joking about? Okay. Let me try something in that realm and just go from there.
There have been a number of times when Caster made references to WWE in his raps. With hindsight, he thinks it’s a bad idea because it can make AEW look second-rate. He brought up that he’s made mention of the allegations against Vince McMahon and things related to John Laurinaitis.
That’s a double-edged sword (bringing up WWE in my raps). Because you can get them on some things and it’ll be a good burn but you’re also putting more light on their product, which they don’t need it. They’re already however many years they’ve been in business. 50, 60, 70? If you count all the way back to the territories. They have that credibility built in, that longevity so, do they need that from the four, five-year-old wrestling promotion in AEW? No, they really don’t, and at a certain point, people would say, ‘Hey, stop doing that’ and I listened. I really try not to do it anymore because it just creates more eyes on their product and not ours. It makes us seem second-rate.
I mean, there were certain things that had nothing to do with the TV show. Reference Vince McMahon on I think the very first time that any sort of allegations came out. When he retired, I referenced him and that was like news, it was news-news. So, I thought, you know, that’s a little bit better than me saying, their TV show, they did this. On their internet show, they did this. It’s way different. John Laurinaitis had done something. I think that’s different than reacting to their TV show. So, I would pick and choose but, honestly, it was never a good idea because it would just create shots back and forth and now you see them taking shots at us and of course they are. If they’re running hot and anyone’s gonna ask them about AEW, of course they’re gonna take shots because we took all the shots at them. Fair is fair. I’m cool with that but, when it comes back around, no one’s gonna complain.
Caster and Bowens are in the midst of their fourth year as The Acclaimed. They were last in action on the 4/27 Collision during which they picked up a win over Grizzled Young Veterans (Zack Gibson & James Drake).
During the AEW Dynasty Zero Hour, The Acclaimed and Billy Gunn dropped the World Trios Titles to Bullet Club Gold (Jay White, Austin Gunn & Colten Gunn).
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
