“Hangman” Adam Page is currently gearing up for the biggest match of his career, and possibly the biggest match in AEW history. Page will challenge Kenny Omega for the AEW World Championship in the main event of Saturday’s Full Gear pay-per-view, marking the culmination of a storyline five years in the making. Page sat with ComicBook this week to reflect on his journey to get to this poin and started off by saying that, unlike so many of his previous big matches, he’s walking in with a positive mindset.
“Unlike many times before, this to me feels better,” Page said. “This feels good. This feels like a party. This feels like hopefully a big celebration. This feels very different than I’ve ever felt it before in a very good way.”
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After being inducted into the Bullet Club in 2016 and joining Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks in the formation of All Elite Wrestling, Hangman claimed during AEW’s first official rally by claiming he’d by the company’s first world champion. He couldn’t quite recall if AEW president Tony Khan knew he’d be calling his shot like that.
“I think it maybe says the most that I’m not even sure. I’m not a hundred percent,” Page said. “I’m trying to remember, it’s been a long ride, it’s been a long time ago. I feel like he’d probably would have [known], but I’m glad I said it either way. No one else did.”
Page then fell short in becoming the inaugural champion at the 2019 All Out pay-per-view, losing to Chris Jericho in the main event. That defeat caused Page to go on a downward spiral mentally, leading to him eventually severing ties with The Elite and becoming a heavy drinker.
“As a person, as an athlete I like to think a lot and I think that’s reflected in whether I can put it into so many words or not how I feel about this coming weekend versus how I felt only days out from that weekend. Very different feelings,” Page said when asked what’s different between that Jericho match and now.
He further elaborated on what he has now that he didn’t have back then — “I don’t want to say confidence because that sounds lame. It sounds dumb, even though it may be true to an extent. I know that when I wrestled Jericho, I was the young guy who joined the Bullet Club who had the break of his career in being able to do that, being able to travel to Japan, who was in all those multi-man matches and who probably got beat in all those multi-man matches with Bullet Club. And the next thing he’s challenging for this new championship for a brand new company, headlining a pay-per-view. It didn’t add up for people and I think truthfully it didn’t add up for me deep inside. I didn’t understand how I got in the position. I mean I know that I won a battle royal to get there, but honestly, that doesn’t feel as meaningful if I had worked my way up from something more. So, yeah I don’t know if I’ve felt a hundred percent the way that I do now back then.”
And in the event Page does win, the beer will undoubtedly be flowing during his celebration — though Page notes he’s not picky on which kind.
“I’ll be honest, I’m not picky,” Page said. “Usually it’s whatever someone hands me because that is my favorite price when it comes from. So beyond that, I don’t know and nobody’s paid me the money to say otherwise (he later added he wouldn’t mind a beer sponsorship, but noted, ‘That’s not what I’m in this for’), so I’ll leave it open-ended.”
Full Gear takes place this Saturday at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The show is available via pay-per-view and on Bleacher Report. Stay tuned for full live coverage of the event!
