N.J.’s Anthony Bowens, AEW’s 1st openly gay wrestling champ, chats before homecoming show – NJ.com
In the ring, Anthony Bowens screams at a decibel suitable only for professional wrestlers and jet engines.
But as the Nutley native discusses his rise to fame — as one half of All Elite Wrestling tag team duo The Acclaimed, with Max Caster — a soft voice comes through over Zoom.
“I’m very introverted by nature,” Bowens, says from a Boston hotel room before a match last Wednesday. Bowens and Caster will be featured in AEW’s Rampage/Full Gear show at Prudential Center in Newark Friday and Saturday.
As successful as Bowens, 31, has been in wrestling — winning fans and making history as AEW’s first openly gay champion — he thought his path would be baseball. After Nutley High School, he played left field for Seton Hall University and right field when he transferred to Montclair State University (class of 2013).
“At that point, I was so drained from it — from the love of the game — to me, almost, if we didn’t win it was like we were nothing,” Bowens recalls. “Like it was for the manager’s win-loss record. That’s what I felt like we were playing for because he took the love of the game from me. And I was just tired of it. I was playing in pain. And ironically, I went into a different career where everything is pain. But I needed something to fill that time. I had been used to all those years, 11 or 12 years, where I was in the baseball field for five, six hours a day.”
He grew up watching wrestling on TV and was a fan. So having AEW bouts run on “Dynamite” Wednesday on TBS and on “Rampage” on Fridays on TNT has been a thrill.
Bowens’ foray into the ring began goofing around with friends when they were stuck in a house during a hurricane. One suggested making a wrestling video.
“The feedback from that was like, ‘Hey, you look like a wrestler. You should probably think about doing it,’” he says. “And that kind of planted the first seed that maybe I can do it.”
A fellow at his local gym, Signature Fitness in Belleville, connected Bowens with Pat Buck, a wrestler and the vice president for talent development at AEW. Even someone accustomed to hours of punishing workouts found the new style of training brutal.
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“It’s much harder,” Bowens says, comparing the two. “With professional wrestling, you’re running up against the ropes. The ropes aren’t soft; they are metal cables, with basically a garden hose around it. So if you run into it more than enough, you’ll end up with scarring and bruises on your back, which I had for weeks.”
He trained himself to land safely and recognized that as grueling as the physical demands were, the mental demands can’t be overlooked.
“We’re not just in there doing things on a whim,” Bowens explains. “There are strategies. There’s listening to the audience because you’re simulating a fight, so you have to create a story. There are so many different layers and aspects to it. I’ve been in the batter’s box with people throwing 98 miles an hour, and they say the hardest thing to do is to hit a baseball that fast in sports. It’s very hard, but professional wrestling is much harder.”
He explains that he sees wrestling as a performance, entertainment done by true athletes.
“I just want to keep proving that I am an elite performer and I’m one of the best out there,” he says. “People can turn on the TV and see a spectacular, entertaining performance.”
Bowens plans to continue wrestling, but he’s also doing other work in front of the camera. He’s been in a few commercials and appeared in a film, “Exit NJ” with another movie, “Classmates,” scheduled for 2023.
Now living in Sherman Oaks, Calif., with boyfriend of six years, Michael Pavano, Bowens has been making videos for their YouTube channel Michael & Anthony. They’ve parodied the Kardashians, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and others in pop culture. So far, the couple has accrued 217,000 subscribers.
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When Bowens came out five years ago on Facebook, he braced himself for homophobic idiocy. A couple of months later, a journalist asked to do a story and that went viral. While his close friends and family knew, he is, after all, in a hyper-masculine world of wrestling. Rather than shun him, his fellow wrestlers have been welcoming.
Since coming out, Bowens says he’s received countless messages from closeted or previously closeted people in “all walks of life, whether it’s kids, whether it’s other athletes in wrestling,” who say Bowens has helped them.
“And I wish I could respond to all of them because when I get those messages it means a lot. It means I made the right decision because it sucks going through all that. It’s a lot of fear, a lot of it is created in your own head, fear of the unknown, fear of judgment, and fear of a ton of things or your safety depending on where you live in the world. It’s a tough, tough thing to go through, especially if you don’t have support around you. To go through it on your own is really heavy. So if I can provide at least some sort of morsel of hope or support by just doing what I love to do every single week, it’s very cool. It’s very rewarding.”
After a decade of wrestling, initially as an independent before joining the burgeoning AEW, Bowens reveled in the victory of becoming champion. He was able to spot his dad in the stands of Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York when he and Caster won the tag team wrestling belt on Sept. 21.
“I want to do everything,” Bowens says. “Professional wrestling is my love. I will do that as long as I can. But on the side, I’d like to start setting foundations where I’ll have something to fall back on. And you know, my creativity leads to still being on camera and also having an outlet to express all that outside of just YouTube.”
Jacqueline Cutler may be reached at jacqueline.cutler@gmail.com. Find NJ.com on Facebook.