Anthony Bowens Wants To Be AEW’s First Gay Champion, Talks About Company’s Inclusiveness – 411mania.com
In an interview with The Sports Courier, Anthony Bowens spoke about his goals in AEW, including becoming the company’s first gay champion. Here are highlights:
On The Acclaimed vs. Swerve in Our Glory at AEW All Out: “We knew that we had a lot of support going into the PPV and we knew this would probably be the sleeper match of the PPV. It ended up exceeding, I guess, everyone’s expectations. 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 ‘there’s no build to this. It’s gonna suck.’ We’re professionals. Allow us to do our job. We did it really, really well. We expected a really good reaction but at that moment when they started chanting, ‘oh scissor me Daddy’, I think if you watch the match even Swerve kind of got caught off guard too.”
On the origin of ‘Scissor Me’: “So the scissor itself, there was a time in…it was a Dark taping way back in the pandemic era. I hit my pose with the A and Caster came up behind me and he scissored me. There was a camera shot of it where I’m kind of like, ‘what the hell? What did you just do?’ And back then, I was more on the safe side with things. Caster loved to push buttons, I was kind of like, ‘I don’t want to get fired. I’m new here. I don’t want to do anything that’s weird.’ I made the face and then eventually they told us to stop doing it, and then for some reason we just started doing it again. I kind of had this rebellious attitude too. I was like, ‘Screw it, let’s just keep doing it.’ I don’t remember what match it us, but I remember being on the floor and looking up and the entire first row had their hands over the barricade and they’re yelling ‘Scissor me Bowens.’ And I was like, ‘Huh. We’re kind of onto something.’ We leaned into it and it just started becoming more and more of a thing. Then we added Billy 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. It just popped into my head because Austin Gunn kept calling his father ‘Daddy’. [I thought]. ‘Be kind of funny if I said Scissor Me Daddy Ass’ live on television. I’m just gonna go out and say it.’ So I went out, I said it, the internet blew up and now it’s turned into the #1 selling t-shirt.”
On the reception from AEW fans with him being openly gay: “It’s great and it’s one of the things that attracted me to come into AEW when I came here as an extra before I was signed. I saw people like Sonny Kiss and Nyla Rose just walking around being themselves without judgment and people being inclusive with them and there was no fear for them at all to be themselves and that was super important to me for wherever I would land at the time. There’s never a time where I’m at work where I’m consciously thinking about it, it’s something that’s openly celebrated. I bring it up openly in front of my friends and co-workers, so we’ve come a long way in terms of inclusiveness in locker rooms and such. Fans from time to time, we still have got work to do but it’s been overwhelmingly positive. 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 being the center of focus. At times, it is important to bring it up. For next week in particular, Max 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 underneath me for that match.”
If you use quotes from this interview, please credit The Sports Courier with an h/t to 411mania.