Former champion issues statement after publicly calling out AEW for his poor booking

A former AEW tag team champion recently voiced his frustrations with his current career trajectory in the Tony Khan-led company. The star in question, Anthony Bowens, began his singles journey earlier this year.

For several weeks now, the self-proclaimed "Pride of Professional Wrestling" has been ranting about his former tag partner Max Caster seemingly outshining him on AEW television despite having lost most of his recent matches. Bowens' issues with The Best Wrestler Alive have also caused a rift to form between him and Billy Gunn, especially after the latter stopped Anthony from continuing to pummel Caster post-match after defeating him in singles competition this past July.

This weekend on AEW Collision, Bowens battled Konosuke Takeshita for a chance to compete for the Unified Championship at All Out : Toronto, but was unfortunately unsuccessful at defeating The Alpha. Around a day after the show, The 5-Tool Player took to X/Twitter to claim that he is overlooked on the All Elite roster because he has not yet "earned his stripes" by wrestling a twenty-plus minute matchup. Bowens later clarified that rather than calling out the company, he had been responding to fans who believe and argue that certain wrestlers are incapable of putting on high-quality singles work.

"No no, I’m calling out certain fans who think they know everything. Who say certain performers aren’t capable of something before seeing them in those do or die scenarios. And at AEW that scenario is usually a high profile singles match on a pay per view." - wrote Bowens.

Check out Anthony Bowens' tweet below:

It remains to be seen when Bowens will be able to showcase his skills in a longer, high-stakes one-on-one PPV bout on All Elite Wrestling programming.

Anthony Bowens might be reuniting with his former AEW tag partner

This week on Saturday Night Collision, Jerry Lynn tried to play peacekeeper between Anthony Bowens and Max Caster, who started brawling all the way down to the ring after "Platinum" Max bumped into Anthony and caused the latter to snap. The ECW legend tried to persuade the duo that they both needed each other to find success again, although Bowens did not appear convinced.

The proceedings were then interrupted by Blake Christian and Lee Johnson of The Swirl, who ambushed Lynn two-on-one. After Caster brought the fight to the heels to help even the odds for the veteran, Bowens joined his former teammate and helped him clear the ring. Although neither of the two stars seemed thrilled about it, they ended up standing tall alongside Lynn on Collision.

It remains to be seen if the aforementioned angle will soon lead to the proper reunion of The Acclaimed.

Edited by Anurag Mukherjee