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The Acclaimed might just be the most over tag team in AEW. Fans love their in-ring style, Max Caster's raps, and most importantly of all, their signature hand gesture, the scissors. No, not since the “suck it” of DX has a gesture been so over with the fans and so gosh-darn unpopular with said fan's teachers, to the point where, according to Swerve Strickland, kids are going to be getting suspended for years to come as a result.
But did you know that the scissoring almost never happened? Unbelievable, right? Well, guess what, according to Matt Hardy, that very much almost happened, as he explained on his Extreme Life podcast.
“The scissoring thing, there was one point where they were told they shouldn't be doing that, but they still kept doing it and then it got over organically on its own in the most incredibly huge way possible,” Hardy said via Wrestling Inc. “It speaks volumes about them and I love that they did it. It reminds me of when I was doing the ‘V1' hand sign and Stephanie McMahon said, ‘You really shouldn't do that, it's never going to get over.' I still kept doing it and it worked, it got over, and it's still around now. Good for them for sticking to their guns.”
Much to everyone's chagrin, the gimmick became very popular very fast, and after failing to flip the straps to Swerve in our Glory at All Out, Tony Khan tipped his hand at Grand Slam in New York and earned one of the most organic pops any home-grown team has generated in AEW's four-year run. Hardy, to his credit, was fully behind the decision to put the belts on The Acclaimed, as he watched the duo fully come into their own from a pair of singles performers on Dark to the eventual Tag Team Champions.
“I thought it was great,” Hardy said via Wrestling News. “I thought it was a great time for The Acclaim to win. I'll say first and foremost, I'm all about acknowledging hard work, especially when someone busted their ass right from the jump and you see someone get over organically because that's what myself and my brother had to do. We kind of were behind the eight ball. We'd been job guys.”
“Tony put them together as a tag team to see if they would work, so they were kind of like, you know, not a tag team before and then they started working together and they were really in unison. I loved Max Caster’s raps. I'm a big fan of his creative rap style. I'm a big rap fan in general. I love to freestyle. Hell, I almost got a gimmick like that, myself and John Cena rapping on the bus on European tours doing freestyle. But you know, Max Caster doing that deal, and Anthony Bowens is such a unique, inspiring story as well, you know, him coming out and revealing his sexuality and really leaning into it. Like being someone who's a role model for young men like him. I've dug all that. So once they got over and they hit so big organically, it makes me proud, because you can tell they put in the effort and they bust their ass, and they're very passionate about what they do. So I will always, always, acknowledge hard work, and those guys worked hard to get to the spot they're in.”
Wow, could fans even imagine a world where the Acclaimed aren't a team, let alone one that doesn't have their signature pink outfits, their signature hand signs, and their unofficial third member, Daddy A–? Fortunately, as the calendar rolls over to 2023, fans won't have to imagine such a reality.
Anthony Bowens explains the history of AEW's most popular hand gesture.
With all of this talk of scissoring, one has to wonder where the gesture even came from and how it became such an important part of The Acclaimed's presentation. Fortunately, Anthony Bowens stopped by Talk is Jericho earlier in 2022 to talk about just that.
“Scissoring is simply a sign of friendship and nothing more [laugh],” Bowens said via Inside the Ropes. “That was another thing [that came up] organically. A lot of things that people love about The Acclaimed have all been organic stuff, which is pretty cool too. There was one time on ‘Dark’ where I hit my little pose where I put my hand down and it looks like an A.”
“Then Max came up from behind and I think, just to rib me, he tried to catch me with the scissor, and I reacted to it like, ‘Whoa, what are you doing?!’ Again, in the beginning, I was super safe with things … They actually asked us to stop doing it for a little bit.”
“And then, I think Max milked my fingers once, which was even worse. So they were like, ‘Go back to the scissoring.’ I was just on the floor for — I can’t remember what match it was, but I knew we were on to something when the entire front row had their hands out and they were all yelling, ‘Bowens, scissor me!’ And then it just became a thing.”
“Now, we do meet and greats, we just did one last weekend where we signed for 4, 5 hours straight, just a constant line. Every person wanted to scissor, they wanted to double scissor, they wanted to chain scissor, they wanted to do all kinds of scissoring. So, it’s a thing now. It’s the new craze in wrestling.”
As professional wrestlers set their resolutions for 2023 – with Drew McIntyre vowing to end The Bloodline – let's hope Bowens and Caster vow to keep the scissoring going for 2023 and beyond.
