Many people, when they think of professional wrestling, think of the physical aspect of strength in having to live that life – but many don’t often think of the mental side of the sport.
Anthony Bowens, one half AEW’s The Acclaimed, joined Chris Russell Tuesday ahead of AEW’s Dynamite show at EagleBank Arena on Wednesday, and revealed how he had to get past his own mental blocks to be successful in the industry – and how doing some self-evaluation of his work made him realize those were even there.
And part of it was coming out as gay, and coming to terms with his sexuality in an industry as “macho” as professional wrestling.
“I think a lot of it started with my coming out; when you're in the closet like that, and so deeply and in an industry that is so hyper-masculine and you fear for your career and your future and all that kind of stuff, you put up walls and mental blocks around you to protect you,” Bowens said. “Whether people can see it or not, I could see it when I was on TV or whatever when I was on the independents. I just wasn’t me, I was this form of me that I was trying to present to people, and the second I came out and let all those walls come down, you could just see, or at least I could see, a big difference, and I think you could see it in terms of where I was in my career before and where I was afterwards, in terms of how I've connected with people, and in terms of how I presented myself. I just feel more authentic and more genuine, and that's because I'm just living my life a lot more freely.”
Bowens revealed a lot of those roadblocks in an interview with Pride.com, where he remembered a segment in AEW where he revealed he is gay as part of a storyline – something that isn’t exactly the norm inside the ring.
Rooster admitted that being in a bad headspace can make it tough for him to do his show, and that’s something many can identify with – and Bowens believes that no matter what that hurdle is, and no matter how different the circumstances are, humans all feel the same emotions.
“I’m glad you can understand that, because I always say all the time because people don't understand what any of that's like – as humans, we all experience the same exact emotions,” Bowens said. “We all know what fear, anxiety, happiness feel like, but there are different situations that exist in everybody's life that that are different, but we all experience those same emotions together. So as long as you can understand where that emotion is coming from, it links everything together.”