Anthony Bowens On Learning Tag Wrestling From FTR, Tony Khan Pitching Acclaimed Gimmick

Anthony Bowens was recently a guest on AEW Unrestricted, where he spoke about learning tag-team wrestling from FTR and other teams.

“I’m learning something different from a different perspective every time we have a match. They aren’t coaches, but I’ve learned a lot sitting down with FTR and doing tape study, because coming into AEW, I was just a singles wrestler. I hadn’t tagged since maybe my first or second year of my career, everything else has just been focused on being a solo star. So, then coming into one of the deepest and the best tag team divisions in the world, I was a bit overwhelmed in the sense of trying to figure out one, how do I keep up with these guys? Two, not to get too specific, but there’s different psychology in terms of tag team wrestling. There are other elements and layers that you have to learn and you have to figure out, and I figured one of the best tag teams to do that with [and] to learn from is FTR, and I’m always just picking up – I try to pick up something new each week that I can implement and focus on until it kind of becomes muscle memory. I gotta thank FTR, I gotta thank a lot of coaches – Jerry Lynn, [Colt] Cabana is always very helpful, I love working with Billy Gunn, Christopher Daniels, everybody, honestly. I feel like everywhere you turn, there’s just years and years and years of experience, you can just ask anybody and get an incredible answer.”

Bowens also spoke about how Tony Khan pitched him the idea of The Acclaimed.

“One of the things that I didn’t have coming in was an established, TV-ready character. I had everything else, but I was just trying to figure out what I can dive into character-wise and having a name and having somewhat of a vision was helpful for me in the sense that I get to create and mold something into the way I would see fit. And honestly, we didn’t have a direct direction. We just knew that, hey, you guys are gonna be called The Acclaimed. It’s gonna be this tag team, you and Max Caster. I think the original vision of it was Caster is this acclaimed rapper and I am this critically acclaimed sports entertainer because I do more than just pro wrestling. I’m a YouTuber, I’m a fitness model, I’m a commercial actor, I host things, I do a little bit of everything. So, we were trying to go that route, but the entrances tend to obviously focus more on the insults and the rap. So, it’s not too much of development on my end in terms who I am, and I’m still really excited to start establishing that on AEW television. But that’s kind of what the basics are and the crux of what The Acclaimed is or what we’re aiming for.”