Bowens also commented on the idea of becoming AEW’s first gay champion.
At AEW All Out, The Acclaimed (Max Caster & Anthony Bowens) unsuccessfully challenged Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland for the AEW World Tag Team Championships. The crowd inside the ‘NOW Arena’ were fully behind Caster and Bowens.
The two are getting a rematch for the belts at Dynamite Grand Slam on 9/21 and ahead of the match, Bowens chatted with TSC News – The Sports Courier about the current happenings in his career.
He looked back on the reaction that he and Caster got at All Out. He said they knew they had a great deal of support coming into the match and highlighted a moment when the crowd began to chant, ‘Oh, scissor me daddy ass’ and it catching both him and Swerve Strickland off guard.
We [Bowens & Caster] knew that we had a lot of support going into the pay-per-view [All Out] and we knew this would probably be the sleeper match of the pay-per-view and it ended up exceeding I guess everyone’s expectations and it’s a good lesson for a lot of the fans who like to whine and complain about things because all I heard throughout the entire week was, ‘Oh, there’s no build to this. It’s gonna suck.’ We’re professionals, allow us to do our job and we did it really well and we expected — again, we expected a really good reaction but that moment when they started chanting, ‘Oh scissor me daddy,’ I think if you watch the match, even Swerve [Strickland] kind of got caught off guard too. We both were like, ‘Oh sh*t’ and I was like, oh, I got to beat this guy up again. So there’s a moment in that match where it’s like wow, this is insane. I have a lot of goals and aspirations and Max too. We both wanna be successful in the professional wrestling business and we push each other to get to this point but, if you said it would happen within two years of being here, two years of being a tag team in general, it’s crazy.
If Bowens and Caster do become champions at Dynamite Grand Slam, Bowens will become AEW’s first gay champion which is something he’ll be extremely proud of if it becomes a reality. He stated that it is providing him with some extra inspiration going into the match.
I take that responsibility of being an out athlete very seriously because I’d like to show that you can be a successful, openly gay professional athlete without it being the center of attention, without it being the center of focus but, at times, it is important to bring it up, like for next week in particular [Dynamite Grand Slam]. Max [Caster] and I are gonna fight for our lives in this match and we also wanna bring home gold and if we do, I end up being AEW’s first gay champion which is something that I would be super proud of so I’m going to have some extra inspiration I guess underneath me for that match.
The ‘scissor me daddy ass’ phrase is one that has become woven into the fabric of Bowens, Caster and Billy Gunn’s presentation. Bowens said the idea came about when he heard Austin Gunn continuously call his father ‘daddy’ and then on the spot, Bowens wondered if he should say the now-popularized phrase.
We leaned into it [scissoring gesture]. It just started becoming more and more of a thing and then we added Billy [Gunn] to the equation and at one particular live Rampage, I was sitting in Gorilla. I was in my wheelchair at the time when I was injured and we were minutes from going out and it just popped into my head because Austin Gunn kept calling his father ‘daddy’. I was like, hmm, it’d be kind of funny if I said ‘scissor me daddy ass’ live on television. I’m just gonna say it. I went out and I said it and came back, internet blew up and now it’s turned into the number one selling t-shirt.
The Acclaimed addressed Swerve In Our Glory on the 9/14 Dynamite ahead of their title match. To hear POST Wrestling’s recap of the latest episode of Dynamite, head over to this link.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit TSC News – The Sports Courier with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
