Max Caster and Anthony Bowens began making their name in AEW while wrestling on their YouTube show Dark. Their work impressed Tony Khan and enough people to the point the duo wound up getting signed by All Elite Wrestling and repackaged as The Acclaimed. However, on a recent appearance on Busted Open Radio, Tommy Dreamer told the duo that AEW wasn’t the only company interested in them before getting their AEW contracts.
Dreamer works on the IMPACT Wrestling creative team and revealed to the duo that the company had interest in them, and it started with Brian Myers throwing their name out there to them.
“You know, I’ll tell you this, I’ll let you in on a little inside. We were losing The Rascalz and wrestling, we know when contracts are coming up [in] IMPACT Wrestling and Brian Myers pitched both you guys to come to IMPACT and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ll probably look at them for the upcoming year.’ So, it’s cool to go from having nothing and I’ll tell you this because not only did you have AEW interested, you had IMPACT interested in you. That [didn’t] happen and everything happens for a reason but just the fact that you go so long in wrestling and then all of a sudden, the doors open up for you and to tell you a quick story, Scotty 2 Hotty was the next Shawn Michaels. He looked just like Shawn Michaels, and he was plugging away for the business for a long, long time and in the same week, he had job offers from ECW, WCW and the WWF, and from doing it for like six-to-eight years and then for the same week to have all these people clamor for him, it’s pretty, pretty cool so you guys, I know at least had options where I didn’t even know if you guys knew that other people were plugging for you and it was based upon your talent.”
The signing from AEW was probably even a bigger deal for Bowens, who had originally had plans to come to AEW earlier than he had. According to him, he was supposed to be at the New Jersey Blood & Guts event that got canceled due to the pandemic.
“Right after we spoke [Busted Open Radio in January], from what I understand, I was supposed to doing something at the Blood & Guts show or at least be there so I was like, ‘This is my moment, this is my time’ and then 30 minutes later, ‘All shows cancelled’ and I was like, ‘No! No, not again’ and then something similar happened in June then finally I was able to get down here and then a couple weeks later the good news came.”
The Acclaimed have had an interesting road to get to where they are now, but The Acclaimed has finally arrived in All Elite Wrestling and have a chance to show the world why multiple companies had interest in them.
h/t to Post Wrestling for the quote
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