Anthony Bowens Credits FTR With Teaching Him About Tag Team Psychology
Anthony Bowens has a multitude of learning trees to sit under as he looks to become a better tag team wrestler in AEW.
Anthony Bowens and Max Caster are collectively known as The Acclaimed. Today, they are one of the fastest-rising tag teams in all of wrestling, but prior to being signed by Tony Khan, they were both singles wrestlers looking to make their mark as solo stars.
Fortunately for them, they have a wealth of experience to choose from when desiring to learn how to best maximize their time as a tag team.
Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Matt Hardy, Christian Cage, and Billy Gunn are just a few of the tag team specialists in AEW who are available to help further along The Acclaimed’s collective career as a tag team. This does not even include names like Bryan Danielson, Chris Jericho, and CM Punk who have multiple Tag Team Championship reigns to their names despite primarily working as singles wrestlers.
Speaking on the latest AEW Unrestricted podcast, Anthony Bowens details his desire to be a better tag team wrestler and credits FTR along with a multitude of coaches as helping him learn the proper psychology of a tag team wrestler.
“Honestly, all of them, because I’m learning something different from a different perspective every time we have a match. They aren’t coaches, but I’ve learned a lot sitting down with FTR and doing tape study, because, coming into AEW, I was just a singles wrestler. I hadn’t tagged since maybe my first or second year of my career, everything else has just been focused on being a solo star. So then coming into one of the deepest and the best tag team divisions in the world, I was a bit overwhelmed in the sense of trying to figure out one, how do I keep up with these guys? Two, you know, not to get too specific, but there’s different psychology in terms of tag team wrestling.
“There are other elements and layers that you have to learn and you have to figure out, and I figured one of the best tag teams to do that with [and] to learn from is FTR, and I’m always just picking up — I try to pick up something new each week that I can implement and focus on until it kind of becomes muscle memory. I gotta thank FTR, I gotta thank a lot of coaches, Jerry Lynn, Colt Cabana is always very helpful, I love working with Billy Gunn, you know, Christopher Daniels, everybody, honestly.”
He concluded, “Yeah, I feel like everywhere you turn, there’s just years and years and years of experience, you can just ask anybody and get an incredible answer.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Anthony Bowens speaks about being offered a spot in NXT and how that ultimately led to Tony Khan making the decision to sign him. Learn more here.
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