During The Acclaimed’s appearance on Busted Open Radio, Tommy Dreamer noted that IMPACT Wrestling was interested in signing them before they eventually signed with All Elite Wrestling. He credits Brian Myers for suggesting their names to management.
“You know, I’ll tell you this, I’ll let you in on a little inside. We were losing The Rascalz and wrestling, we know when contracts are coming up [in] IMPACT Wrestling and Brian Myers pitched both you guys to come to IMPACT and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ll probably look at them for the upcoming year.’ So, it’s cool to go from having nothing and I’ll tell you this because not only did you have AEW interested, you had IMPACT interested in you. That [didn’t] happen and everything happens for a reason but just the fact that you go so long in wrestling and then all of a sudden, the doors open up for you and to tell you a quick story, Scotty 2 Hotty was the next Shawn Michaels. He looked just like Shawn Michaels, and he was plugging away for the business for a long, long time and in the same week, he had job offers from ECW, WCW and the WWF, and from doing it for like six-to-eight years and then for the same week to have all these people clamor for him, it’s pretty, pretty cool so you guys, I know at least had options where I didn’t even know if you guys knew that other people were plugging for you and it was based upon your talent.”
(transcript credit: PostWrestling.com)
It was announced by AEW President Tony Khan earlier this month that AEW had signed The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens and Max Caster) to a contract. Bowens had interest from the WWE back in early 2019, but wasn’t signed because the WWE simply moved on without contacting him. Bowens was used as enhancement talent versus the Viking Raiders (then War Raiders) and was given a concussion during the match.