On the April 27th episode of Collision, The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens & Max Caster) faced off against the newly arrived Grizzled Young Veterans (Zack Gibson & James Drake). The former WWE stars put over the established AEW act.
Gibson and Drake discussed their debut during an interview with Tom Campbell from Cultaholic Wrestling.
Drake: “We had a great time there, great conversation with Tony (Khan at AEW Collision). The one thing that I love about that place is it celebrates wrestling. So, first and foremost, it celebrates wrestling. If you can go, you will get your roses. That’s kind of it and that’s literally something that me and Zack have really prided ourselves on for a very long time. I am 5’10 on a good day. I could probably get wider but I’m not gonna get taller and I really, really hate how for a very long time in wrestling, something as, you know, silly as your height can dictate your future. It’s very silly when you can think about the bigger picture… Shows like a TNA or shows like an AEW, people tune in to watch your craft and then they decide, do we like them? Do we not like them? And then it’s purely based on your craft… It’s very refreshing, to say the least.”
Gibson: “Obviously, when we came out, we said that we wanted to be everywhere, we wanted to work with all of the best talents that are out there and you can’t go on record of saying that and then not end up at least trying to do work with the AEW tag division because that division is stacked. There’s rumors of other people coming in but, regardless of looking at who potentially could be in, just look at the actual active division right now. With like, Acclaimed, FTR, Young Bucks. The list just goes on and on and on and it’s just top-tier tag team wrestling who are given time to shine and actually show out and do proper tag team wrestling on TV with some real purpose. So it’s just such an exciting place to get a foot in there. We were both buzzing to be there. The Acclaimed were great opponents for us. The crowd was hot on the night, crowd was hot on the internet kind of reacting to everything so, everything’s coming up Milhouse.”
H/T to Post Wrestling for the transcription
