The Acclaimed are one of the hottest acts in AEW and it all comes down to… scissors.
The team, which consists of Anthony Bowens, Max Caster and ‘Daddy Ass’ Billy Gunn, saw their popularity skyrocket when they introduced their scissor handshake, which led to hands frothing, and the crowd chanting ‘Scissor me Daddy Ass’.
Exclusively spoken against Digital spyBowens revealed that he wasn’t sure scissor work would fly on AEW television, let alone become the team’s trademark.
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“It first started when we were in Dark during the pandemic,” Bowens said.
“We had our much-vaunted hand symbol and Caster came from behind and did a little scissor thing and you can see me on camera giving him one That it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re getting fired.’
“We did it again and they kindly asked us maybe not to do that. Then at one point we just felt rebellious when Max came back from [his suspension] and we started tagging again, we were like, ‘We have to stand out from the rest.’
“’We have to do things that are different,’ and we started working on it again and I started thinking of little elements to add to it.
‘Then at one point I lay down on the floor [during a match] and I looked up and I saw the front rows saying, “Scissor me Bowens!”
“I thought, ‘Huh? I think we’re on to something,'” he added. “So we both really started to believe in it.”
At the time, Bowens and Caster had teamed up with Billy Gunn, known in WWE as ‘Mr Ass’, and who had left his own sons, The Gunn Club, to join them.
When Bowens started calling Gunn “Daddy Ass,” things really took off for the team.
“Adding the final piece of the puzzle, Billy Gunn with the ‘Scissor me Daddy Ass,’ made it all explode,” Bowens said.
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But despite their popularity, the team still had to convince everyone to embrace the power of scissors.
“To get the ‘Scissor me Daddy Ass’ T-shirt, I really had to push for that every week,” Bowens continued.
“It wasn’t so much AEW, but the fact that this thing has to climb all the way up the ladder to the parent company. So we have to convince these teams of network executives that it’s a really good idea to put on a ‘Scissors for Me’ to make.” Papa Ass,’ T-shirt off.”
Now The Acclaimed are so popular that Bowens can’t go anywhere without being asked to rally.
“’It puts a smile on people’s faces,’” Bowens said. “It’s something I do with people literally everywhere.
“I get stopped at airports, in public, wherever I go, there’s usually someone who sneaks up and says, ‘I don’t want to bother you, but can we just get together real quick?’ It’s really fun.”
Catch AEW Dynamite live every Thursday at 1AM in the UK, Rampage every Saturday at 3AM, and Collision every Sunday at 1AM on TrillerTV with an AEW Plus subscription. US customers can also watch Dynamite on TBS and Rampage and Collision on TNT, and in Britain AEW repeats the broadcast on ITV4.
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Stephanie is a writer who specializes in professional wrestling, covering everything from AEW and WWE to NJPW.
After graduating with a degree in history from Queen Mary University of London, she went on to study journalism at Birbeck University.
In addition to her journalism work, Stephanie is also a YouTube content creator focusing on AEW and interviewing talent from AEW, WWE and the rest of the indie wrestling scene. She has also worked for Revolution Pro Wrestling as a backstage interviewer and commentator.