Anthony Bowens Looks Back On AEW Singles Run, Says He Was Supposed To Turn Heel
Insight into Anthony Bowens’ solo run.
Michael Fairman interviewed former AEW World Tag Team Champion Anthony Bowens. As the conversation moved along, Bowens opened up about his singles run in All Elite Wrestling.
He stated that the creative switched up as he was working towards being a heel. He commented on the sentiment that his singles run flopped. Bowens added that the initial phase of his singles run was meant to be how it was to serve as a catalyst for him snapping and turning heel.
“Well, what I was working towards last year was being a heel. Creative switched and it ended up going into a brief kind of Acclaimed reunion. But that’s what I think people don’t understand. They think that the return was a flop, which it wasn’t. It was made to be that way so that I can go off the deep end, blame Billy (Gunn) for my not being able to win the big matches, blame the fans for choosing (Max) Caster over me, adding to his delusion of being ‘The Best Wrestler Alive’ and then I would go into what ‘The Pride of Pro Wrestling’ was. Yes, it’s a very fun play on words but honestly it has really nothing to do with me being gay. The Pride of Pro Wrestling is an ambassador to the company that feels like he’s being overlooked and he will do anything to get his flowers. That’s really what it was.” Bowens continued, “I do a lot of work for the company and I always feel like fans kind of overlooked me a little bit. They look to these other guys when I’m out making sure I’m flying the AEW flag everywhere so, I wanted to bring those emotions to the character and I had such fun ways to building that desperation of wanting people’s admiration. I was like, ‘Ouu! It’s so good.’ But, unfortunately, we were kind of left with — because it didn’t progress — we were kind of left with people going, ‘Oh, he came back and his character flopped.’ It’s like, yeah, that was the purpose.” He added, “I came back as this corny superhero… Thinking that I’m gonna be the next big thing, but, I lost the big matches. Everybody was cheering for Caster and doing his clap and all of a sudden, you saw me starting to get a little bit more cocky despite losing and then why am I not winning? ‘Billy, you’re supposed to be coaching me. Bringing me to the top. You’re not doing your job, and the fans, after all I do for you, you’re cheering for the person that you hated?’ So it was a lot of real emotions balled up and I was trying to bring it to the screen but you know, what happened happened and I don’t like to dwell on anything and I’m with The Opps now and hopefully — well, I was with The Opps — we’ll see how things work out.”
As Bowens mentioned, he would eventually align with The Opps (Samoa Joe, HOOK, Katsuyori Shibata & Action Andretti). He spoke about his time with the group.
“Being with somebody like Samoa Joe, who is a professional wrestling legend, so well respected, one of the best to ever do it. I got lucky I got to work with Billy (Gunn) and now I get to work with Joe and also at the same time, two of some of my best friends in the world in Action Andretti and HOOK. Because we have our real friend group that Tony named — or was it Cody?… I think it was Tony — named us The Lads: Me, HOOK, Dante (Martin) and Darius (Martin), Top Flight, and then we added Action on so to be able to have bits of that friendship put on television for people to see and get to work with your friends is really cool and then you got (Katsuyori) Shibata who’s just a legend in Japan and somebody you do not wanna mess with at all,” Bowens laughed. “You have a guy like that in your corner who’s also very knowledgeable and can teach you and mold you into hopefully a better performer. It’s pretty cool.”
Fightful Select reported in early October that Bowens is now a free agent. Bowens spoke about his future, and his comments can be read here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Michael Fairman with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
