Hangman Weekly | AEWeekly #179

Welcome to the #AEWeekly review discussion where PWM contributors reflect on the highlights of the last week in AEW. The eligibility week always includes the most recent episode of Dynamite and Collision, plus any social-media exclusives up until publication.

This week’s contributors are Sachin [@sachin0mac.bsky.social], Emiliana [@emilianartb.bsky.social] with the Moment of the Week, and Sergei [@sergeialderman.bsky.social] editing and organizing it all.

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Hangman Adam Page 

"With all due respect, I earned it."

by Sachin.

Sometimes the vibes are far more important than the actual words. There was one thing and one thing only that everyone wanted to see after All In and that was to see the Men’s world champion with the world championship and As Adam Page stood in the ring with Gold strapped to his waist, the crowd took charge by wholeheartedly chanting  ‘YOU DESERVE IT’.

A good conspiracy nutjob could make the case that this entire crowd was made up of paid actors who were instructed to recreate the exact crowd reaction after Hangman won the title the first time. If I remember it correctly he responded to those chants by directly challenging the ‘YOU DESERVE IT’ chants and claiming that he earned it (which he did).

However this time he was in a joyous mood and didn’t care to be pedantic and in fact thanked the crowd for what they did for him.

“I do think that some of you might have missed the point and I think that there's something more important than that that needs to be said.

Not from you to me but from me to you because the truth is that you deserve it.

You are the ones. You are the ones who needed and demanded a better wrestling, a fully realized professional wrestling. You are the ones who supported a grassroots do-it-yourself approach to pro wrestling.

I want you to know that we just don't do it for this championship.

In actuality, we do all of this because of you.”

There's an aura of sincerity that has been attached to Hangman that is very difficult for any wrestler to manifest. Even outside of wrestling it's difficult to manifest for anyone no matter what they do. It takes years to build a reputation and trust to an extent that whenever you say something the other person believes that whatever you are saying is being said in good faith and with bonafide intentions.

I can believe that Hangman is sincerely grateful to the audience not only because of what is being said but it is also in line with his character. The audience stuck by him not just during the All In match and the build up to it but also during the earlier part of the year where he himself didn't feel worthy of anyone's respect.

“Some of the people who fought in that war have not come out of it the same. So tonight I do need to say thank you to all of them. Not just for Saturday, but for all of it. I need to say thank you to Orange Cassidy, I need to say thank you to Jay White, I need to say thank you to Adam Copeland, to all of the Opps, to Shibata, to Will Hobbs, to Samoa Joe, to Brian Danielson and to Darby Allen, and I need to say thank you to someone who when I was in the ring with him at Double or Nothing reminded me why I love professional wrestling and made me excited for the future that AEW has in front of it. Someone who did not get to walk out of All In on his own volition. Someone who paid the price for this moment. I need to say thank you to Will Osprey.”

This was the part of the promo that despite being sensible came across as a little too corny for my taste. It wasn't disingenuous and Hangman certainly has a good reason to mention these names but putting COPE, Jay White and Orange there was just a little too iffy for me. You can certainly draw a tenuous connection between these men and Hangman’s title chase but they weren't really out to help Hangman and I really don't see much of a reason as to why he should thank them. 

Still at the end of the day this portion of the speech displayed some humility and gratefulness from Hangman’s side and that kinda thing only gets people to like you more so a minor nitpick because of my own personal preference doesn't really matter. Of course the best part of this Thanks-giving ceremony was saved for right after you would think Hangman has thanked the last man.

“If I am going to be the champion and the man that I say I am, then I do have to say this. I don't know whether he helped for himself or he helped for AEW or for one small moment he decided to help me but I will say to Swerve Strickland — thank you.”

The crowd breaking out the ‘Whose house? Swerve's house’ chant at the right moments during this bit was the perfect chef's kiss that elevated this moment so much. We had seen the reactions that this chant would draw from Hangman late last year, so to see him be unaffected by them and continue on doing the right thing is character development that you don't often see in pro-wrestling. I also loved the fact that they (AEW) have left it open as to why (at least in Hangman's mind) Swerve helped which of course leaves a lot of possibilities for a future feud.

“All In weekend for me was a roller coaster. Highs and lows and I am not ashamed to say that in addition to buckets of blood, I did shed a few tears and there are people like John Moxley who would say that that makes me weak. They would say that that makes me less of a man.

But I want you to look at me. I have a wife and two kids who love me. I have thousands and millions of people watching AEW fans who can look to me and who can respect me and if you want to know what kind of man I am, you can look at me tonight because I am the champion of the fucking world.”

I mean there really aren't that many other cooler ways to end a promo than by shouting out with full chest an uncensored fuck on the public airwaves.

All in all, this was a solid promo to establish and cement Hangman Adam Page as The Babyface of this company. I did have my expectations set high as I wanted to have an idea for who'll be the next challenger but it seems that won't be clear until after Blood & Guts… and given what I saw in that TDM, I have no complaints if AEW wants to put Hangman and Jon Moxley in a hardcore match again.

gif lovingly crafted by Emiliana

Hangman Adam Page

"Toxic Masculinity Died on July 12th 2025… At Least To Me"

by Emiliana.

For a lot of fans, it is quite easy to sit back and relax knowing that Hangman Adam Page won the world championship and that all will be right in the world in the aftermath. For others, not so much. Because, you see, despite believing this would never come to pass again, the biggest issue we ever had with the booker was never in the ability to make the win come to fruition - it was what would happen in the reign that came after. Because we’d seen the win before. What we didn’t see was the successful promotion and consistency of the champion on television in the follow up. I think back to the November 17th episode in Virginia in 2021, how Hangman opened the show but he didn’t end it, how he might could’ve wrestled, but he didn’t step foot back in the ring until Winter Is Coming. I think about how CM Punk was the one who closed that show, talked down on someone in the crowd, called Hangman by the incorrect epithet - “Cowboy” Adam Page. I remember, even at the time, being slightly irked by that. And the cursed feeling in the pit of my stomach continued for the entirety of the reign until we got to the even more cursed feud with Punk and subsequent title loss.

So, I think it was only natural to be worried at how our men’s world champion would be presented on the first show after All In. When he opened the show, and I realized he would be closing by fighting in the ring, it sort of dissipated that concern - almost instantly.

I’m sure that Sachin will have gone in depth on this promo (or hell, maybe he had more to say about Toni instead - lord knows he’s not picking the Cope promo unless he wants to shit on it), but either way, I’d like to go over the key points that Hangman made in his first live mic promo as champion - of which I hope there will be many more to come:

• Gratitude for the fans

• A stark reminder of what AEW started as and the potential still to come

• Gratitude for all the wrestlers that fought (and DIED!!) to reach the point of pulling the world title out of that briefcase

• A callback to earlier promos (when he said he would give his blood, sweat, soul, and possibly even tears) by saying he gave much of his blood, but also many of his tears the past weekend

This last bullet point is probably my favorite, not because it made me feel special - as the first bullet point did, when he looked straight at the camera as he expressed gratitude to the fans who showed up for All In - but because I needed him to call out specifically the type of people that exist in this world that believe that crying isn’t manly.

Because here’s the thing - Moxley, from their very first feud, did two things: he invalidated the emotional struggles that Hangman went through with his former friends The Elite, and he disrespected Hangman by calling him a “kid.” He picked these themes back up in the build to All In this year, in a wonderful show of continuity. A lot of Mox’s persona in the last year could be chalked up to Punk-isms (“I work with CHILDREN” - calling Hangman a “kid”) or toxic masculinity - something that oftentimes I notice that a good chunk of the male audience seems to not even realize they are rooting for. I won’t name names, because I hear everything secondhand anyway, but these things do come to my attention and I have to address them: the same kind of man that could not stand toe to toe with a wrestler in a fistfight has the audacity to claim that the very same wrestler is too emotional and cries too much. The same kind of man that could not stand toe to toe with a 4 foot 11, 110 pound joshi in the ring has the audacity to say that it’s unbelievable for a woman that size to wrestle a credible five star match. The same kind of man that believes that the women’s demographic means nothing and isn’t the proverbial canary in the coal mine for what draws and what is narratively appealing in pro wrestling has the audacity to buy into the toxic masculinity of pro wrestling culture and act like Hangman Adam Page couldn’t knock their teeth down their throat if he wanted to. That last bit of Hangman’s promo was an address to them, as was paralleled by the way he looked dead at the camera in three important moments: when he addressed the fans that showed up to All In, when he addressed Swerve Strickland, and when he addressed every person who has ever believed that crying is a mortal male sin. He defiantly pointed out that he was a man with a wife and children, millions of adoring fans, and if that wasn’t enough - he was the champion of the FUCKING world, because apparently toxic masculinity men only respond to that kind of success, and not every other part of what makes a man a man; for example, showing up for your friends, being kind to others, expressing your emotions and showing gratitude and communicating effectively when it’s necessary (all things that adults and persons in general should be good at, by the way).

I think I will replay that last part for as long as I live - hell, I replayed the clip at least 50 times in the first 24 hours that the promo aired - because there is something so delicious about seeing the guy who nearly drank himself to death (in kayfabe) finally looking back at all he’s accomplished, and not just SAYING the words - as he had to Mox in 2022 with the wonderful “I am still here” promo - but actually MEANING them. In 2022, it was about survival, it was about faking it till he made it, it was about doing whatever it took to scratch and claw his way out of the depression he’d fallen into post-loss at Double or Nothing, it was about once again lying to himself so that he wouldn’t fall back into the hole. But this time - you could see the air of confidence in our men’s world champion, and it feels as if the potential we always knew he had inside has finally manifested itself to completion, in a way it never truly had the first time around. This is what the kids call, “aura.” If you ever thought this wasn’t The Guy, you don’t have a choice in the matter anymore. You’ve lost the war. Get over it, because there’s a new fucking sheriff in town, and his name is Hangman Adam Page.