Anthony Bowens vs. Max Caster, AEW Dynasty, 4.6.25: The Pride of Professional Wrestling

I try to pay special attention whenever a mainstream American pro wrestling company takes care to treat their LGBTQ+ talent with respect, or even better, to treat that diversity as an asset, and not just something to exploit in order to sell tickets. I've talked about it before, but pro wrestling has a pretty gnarly history of presenting gay/femme characters as automatic heels as a way to generate heat. From Gorgeous George to Adrian Street to Adrian Adonis to Goldust, queer wrestling characters have been something to mock or fear. Pro wrestler Chris Kanyon infamously committed suicide because he was so closeted that he was terrified to be out and proud in a pro wrestling locker room, afraid of how his peers would treat him.

It's gotten better, though. At WrestleMania 34, ally Finn Balor famously featured pride rainbows on his shirt and made his entrance flanked by local New Orleans LGBTQ+ wrestling fans. Now-former WWE wrestler Sonya DeVille is proudly out and would often wrestle with a rainbow handkerchief in her back pocket. AEW crowned the first nationally-televised transgender world champion when Nyla Rose won the Women's World Championship in 2020. And the love triangle storyline between "Timeless" Toni Storm, Mariah May, and Mina Shirakawa in AEW last summer did a fantastic job of being a fun storyline that was in no way exploitive or intended to titillate a male audience.

(It should be noted that this mainstream shift in how wrestling treats its queer talent bubbled up from the independent scene. Shows like Effy's Big Gay Brunch and promotions like Enjoy Wrestling have given fans an outlet to express their desire to see these talents treated with respect and appreciation.)

I have to admit, I got a little emotional during the pre-show of AEW's Dynasty pay-per-view last Sunday. "Platinum" Max Caster has been doing this bit week to week, you see. A couple months back he and his former tag team partner in the Acclaimed, Anthony Bowens, split up. The Acclaimed were a super-popular tag team at their hottest, winning the World Tag Titles and famously participating in a hilarious in-ring sketch where then-heel Harley Cameron tried hitting on Bowens, to which he responded, "uh, I don't know if this ring gear gives it away, but lady...I'm gay" (to which the crowd, who mostly knew this already, exploded in joyous "he's gay!" chants). Max Caster is known for rapping his way to the ring, dissing his opponents and making oft-times cringe references to current events (he comes of as liberal, but still edge-lordy and a little borderline at times). AEW saw that fans were tiring of his schtick, while still embracing Bowens and their manager/third, "Bad Ass" Billy Gunn, a WWE legend and current AEW trainer & agent who also took part in a problematic gay angle back in the early 00's with his tag partner Chuck Palumbo, but now proudly backs up Bowens as "Daddy Ass." So smelling money in a classic "tag team partners break up and feud" story, they dissolved the team, and Bowens and Gunn temporarily stormed out of the company, leaving Max to snottily proclaim himself the "Best Wrestler Alive" and issue a series of weekly open challenges, where random badass members of the roster (like Konosuke Takeshita, Hook, or Mark Briscoe) would show up and promptly squash Caster in about a minute, much to the audience's delight.

The Max Caster open challenge made its way to the Dynasty pre-show, and pretty much everyone knew what that meant. Max came out, did his schtick where he tries to get his hilarious non-rhythmic chant over ("Let's-go-Max-you're-thebest-wrestler-a-live," which is, of course, starting to get over with the fans) and then insults the fans because they don't do it well enough, and then...the lights dropped, the opening strains of unrecognized theme music began playing (turns out it was "Underground" by Jane's Addiction, which is from their 2011 album The Great Escape Artist so I did not recognize it AT ALL), and the video screen lit up: "ANTHONY BOWENS: THE PRIDE OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING."

The crowd EXPLODED. The video screen displayed his name in huge letters. The music was loud and driving. Dude had PYRO. AEW was presenting the returning Bowens like a megastar. As the fans roared their approval, Bowens and Billy made their way to the ring, and Anthony promptly kicked the shit out of his former partner, squashing him in 40 seconds. Was this my favorite squash match since the Ultimate Warrior annihilated the Honky Tonk Man at the first SummerSlam? Maybe!

This absolutely ruled and re-watching it almost makes me tear up. Call me a big softie, but I definitely have a thing for big returns in pro wrestling, where someone's been off camera for a spell (usually because of a gnarly injury), and the fans react in a way that lets that person know "hey, we remember you and you were missed." That's good stuff. But consider:

Anthony Bowens the tag team wrestler was certainly popular, and got over with the crowd as part of a tag team act that was put together by the company, handed in-house theme music, and given time to organically grow their following and figure out what worked for them. With that sweat equity built in, the repackaged Anthony Bowens, solo star, seems to have some serious company investment now. Riding off the Acclaimed's popularity and merch sales, Bowens returned at Dynasty presented like a massive star. Fresh entrance graphics, new gear, pyro, and perhaps most telling: that Jane's Addiction song. Licensing outside music for a talent is considerably more expensive than having AEW's in-house composer, Mikey Rukus (a talented dude in his own right), whip something up. When Hook made his debut to Action Bronson's "The Chairman's Intent," AEW head Tony Khan explained it as an investment he was making in the presentation of someone he saw as a future star of the company. That he dropped the coin to license a Jane's song (which had to be, uh, pricey) is a sign that there are hopefully big plans in store for Bowens. Certainly, AEW's sometimes scattershot pushes may cause some skepticism (when's the last time we saw a Scorpio Sky vignette that lead to absolutely nothing? We haven't forgotten you, Sky!), but I'm sure Perry Farrell's already cashed the check, so the investment is real.

(As an aside - I decided to check out the rest of that 2011 Jane's album over lunch, and it's...fine. They didn't even have a credited bass player at the time, and real heads know that Eric Avery is what makes that band great, so the whole thing kind of sounds like "what if Perry Farrell sang for a modern rock band that was influenced by Jane's Addiction?" But damn, there's something about taking a passably distinctive rock song and making it the soundtrack to a huge pro wrestling entrance with fans going absolutely kablooey that makes me start to think that song is a righteous jam. Fair play to you, Jane's Addiction and Anthony Bowens!)

In 1996, I attended a marathon taping of two episodes of Monday Night Raw in Green Bay, WI. Goldust was wrestling in the main event and got squashed by the Warrior – then on his last run with the company, but before Warrior exposed himself as a homophobic bigot on the college lecture circuit. As Goldust heeled it up in the ring, I cringed in my seat hearing the Brown County Arena faithful chanting a certain f-word that I will not repeat here. I don't think I've ever been more embarrassed to be a wrestling fan than I was that night. It's a little ironic, because the man under the makeup playing to the crowd for heat that night, Dustin Rhodes, is now a very loud advocate for his trans daughter (just one of many reasons why Dustin Rhodes is the man). Still, for all the evolution wrestling has done in the last 30 years or so, it can still miss the mark. WWE in particular feels like it's taking a step back from anything that might smell of "DEI," especially considering the company's closeness to the current occupant of the White House. In this current political environment, seeing the second-largest wrestling company in the States, a company with a national TV presence on TNT, TBS and MAX, acknowledge their roster's diversity as a strength and not shy away from it, is a little glimmer of hope. Pro wrestling is a scuzzy business - as that Jane's Addiction song says, "we're all hustlers." So it's never a good idea to go all in and assume that any company run by a billionaire is 100% wholesome. But this...this matters. In 2025, it's important. It may be a silly segment on a silly pro wrestling show, but it's representation in an industry that has a history of falling severely short in that regard. So I'll take it, and I'll wish yet again that Chris Kanyon were alive to see it.