On Wednesday night, Hangman Adam Page and Maxwell Jacob Friedman confronted each other in a no violence conversation in-ring to discuss their match at Revolution.
The segment spun people into remembering a situation back in 2019 involving Cody Rhodes. Back in 2019 in a build up for Full Gear, Cody Rhodes in challenging Chris Jericho randomly decided if he didn’t win? He would never be able to compete for the AEW Men’s World Championship again. Cody would lose that match and the situation of him never being able to fight for the title made things awkward in AEW.
But let’s back up a bit. The promo itself was decent, and added a lot of intrigue to a match some people were just writing off as a way for MJF to get his wins back from 2025 against Page. The big moment of the promo was Adam Page admitting he hates MJF because he never met someone more like him.
Now personally, I just want to slip in and say… he is only saying this because Jay White isn’t around. Jay White is the true flipside of the same coin. But hey, MJF is close enough. Anyway back to it.
Hangman’s point is that MJF is desperate for love and acceptance no different to him. That both men need the championship to feel complete unlike others who just want it. Page wants to end the feud for good, forever, and that’s why it can’t be a normal wrestling match.
Adam Page tells MJF that he wants him to think of a stipulation for the match while Page wants it to be Texas Death. Page then said once they pitch their ideas the fans would decide which one to go with. MJF says if anyone thinks they won’t just do a normal wrestling match is out of their damn mind.
I just want to quickly break down why. You see, Maxwell Jacob Friedman is a heel. He’s also the champion. That means he has to be pinned or submitted to lose. Last year, he tried to corner Hangman Adam Page by making him agree that if he got disqualified or counted out the belt would go to MJF in their match at Forbidden Door. Here he just wants the straight up wrestling match because he has ways out of it. MJF can get disqualified, he can get counted out, it can go to a draw, all kinds of things to get out of a clean finish. Page has to beat him. MJF doesn’t have to beat Page.
Page has been in this situation before. With Jon Moxley last year, everyone watched as Mox used weapons, numbers advantages, and lights out lights on interference attacks to keep his championship. Page’s way to nullify that was to push Jon Moxley into accepting Texas Death where everything was allowed. If everything is allowed? Page could have backup. Page could also use weapons. It’s a level playing field. He wants this against MJF because anything MJF does? Page doesn’t have to sneak around a referee.
MJF would be in a disadvantage in this situation based on everything he is. There’s no way he would ever agree to it. That’s why Adam Page goes to the extremes and says, “Max if you will agree to this, I will give you something. Max if you agree to this I will give you my word. I will give all of you, I will give all of you my word Max. That if I don’t win this match I will never challenge for the All Elite Wrestling Men’s World Championship for as long as I live.”
The reaction from the crowd I am not sure yet if it’s what they wanted. MJF said he got himself a deal, but would wait until next week to reveal his stipulation. Hangman Page here states he wants Texas Death as the end of the promo.
Dusty Ass Booking
I want to first explain why this sort of stipulation is just plain terrible. I’ve already seen people online say oh this is a good thing. Hangman can just turn heel and lie. Yeah, and what if the crowd turns him back? He’s now just a flip flopper. Means nothing. Nothing means anything. Why would you want nothing to mean anything in your pro wrestling? That’s Vince Russo shit.
I’ve also heard people try to conjure old 80s booking of having the babyface return under a mask and try to win the title that way. Do you think we’re all stupid? There’s a reason nobody has done it since Mister America in WWE with Hulk Hogan, and it was completely played for laughs. Nobody buys it. It makes the wrestling promotion look stupid. It makes the wrestlers look stupid. It’s a funny Bugs Bunny gag but it’s no way to run a modern wrestling show you’re trying to get people to take serious.
The real problem is that even if AEW doesn’t post a physical image of their rankings anymore? We still believe rankings exist. We still believe that the wrestlers who win the most will be considered the top wrestlers in All Elite Wrestling. When Cody did this stipulation and was TNT Champion it was okay. Once he lost the title? It now made absolutely no sense for him to climb up a rankings.
How can you have a wrestler in your company win matches without being ranked? While no booker would do it, it breaks logic (luchanarrative dissonance) of wrestling to have a guy who could possibly beat the Men’s World Champion a dozen times and not once can that match be for a title. You can’t have a wrestler be technically more successful but can’t be ranked. It makes the champions look bad.
We have real world examples of this. Between 1967 and 1970, Muhammed Ali was unable to have sanctioned boxing matches due to his refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam War. During that time, Jimmy Ellis was WBA World Heavyweight Champion. Do you think for one moment anyone really believed Jimmy Ellis was the true champion of the world? Everyone knew it was Ali, even if Ali couldn’t fight. That’s the situation you create when you have a guy who just can’t fight for it.
The only way you can do this is if it isn’t on AEW books, and you need AEW President Tony Khan to say that this isn’t a stipulation but a promise. If Hangman Adam Page becomes number one contender he’s going to have to willingly give up his contendership to keep a promise. This can’t be on the books. That way you can break a personal promise whenever, but it isn’t a stipulation of the match.
Ways Out
AEW will have a week to think about whether or not this was a good idea or not. The audience reaction, the online reaction, I don’t know if they got the reaction they wanted. It did create more excitement for the program but in a way not too different from John Cena randomly turning heel last year because Dwayne Johnson said so. It creates attention but it’s hollow and essentially a bad idea that creates more bad ideas.
AEW can just go ahead and say no Hangman, you can’t do that. And then MJF says, “I know I only agreed to this because you put up something big but I like the idea of this stipulation for the match” and go with it. Not the prettiest way to do it, but pro wrestling as a weekly scripted program allows you to make changes on the fly when something doesn’t work.
There’s of course just going through with it and Hangman Adam Page wins the AEW Men’s World Championship. I’d be surprised to see MJF lose three straight times to Page. Again, I think this entire program is just so MJF can get his win back, and this stipulation just makes it an even bigger win.
If Page wins you’d have a fresh new heel in Swerve to be able to finally face him for the AEW Men’s World Championship, which would be a pretty big match. I have a hard time seeing Swerve lose that match because him as a heel could be carried right to All In London. I just will admit I’m also married to the idea of Kenny Omega becoming AEW Men’s World Champion to face Will Ospreay at All In London, and that’s a lot of title bouncing if you go MJF to Page to Swerve to Omega to Ospreay all in one year.
The best way out to me is for Page to specify that the only way the promise not to challenge for the title again can occur is the Texas Death match. Whatever MJF chooses doesn’t include that stipulation. So if MJF says they are doing a Dog Collar match and the crowd picks that? It’s MJF’s stipulation and Hangman’s promise isn’t included. Or MJF decides on doing a triple decker cage match and the crowd is so excited for that they forget about the promise altogether.
It’s also possible this is all what AEW wanted, and specifically, what Hangman Adam Page wanted.
Exit Door
Hangman Adam Page could be looking at this as his final year in All Elite Wrestling, as his and the other members of The Elite have their contracts up sometime in 2027 (likely spring when they signed them) and he sees having such a huge loss like this keeping him out of the World championship picture as a way to take his losses, stay in other divisions, before eventually making his exit.
Maybe Page is weighing heavily on the reaction to his photo with Marty Scurll leading to a lot of fans feel like he is a hypocrite (I’ve known since 2022 and have talked openly about it and find anyone who has been a wrestling fan for more than 15 years act like pro wrestlers still being friends with bad people as a big deal when almost every wrestler in a major wrestling promotion is either friends with or working with bad people is just disingenuous) and feels maybe the best course of action is to take some losses and head out in the sunset. Maybe he just wants to be a family man and doesn’t want to spend so much time on the road and plans to move on from the career of being a wrestler.
Even if this was the case? This stipulation is a bad idea. There’s great feuds that can be made with that world title and if Page can’t compete for it? You cut the legs out of the match results. You can’t have your champion losing to him, but you also won’t have any drama in it because you know he can’t be beating champions without becoming the champion.
That’s why my hope is cooler heads prevail by the time we get to the next AEW Dynamite and they re-think this stipulation.
Choices
I think I’ve laid out how many ways this stipulation (or promise) would be a terrible idea. It’s not about some preservation of Hangman Adam Page since I figured he’d be losing the match anyway. I’m not a fan of these promises, and think they could have thought of something better. It was a shock for the sake of a shock, and it reminded folks of Cody Rhodes. Never a good thing.
It’s still not a complete picture, as AEW made sure this was just talking it out. We still need to know what MJF’s stipulation is, and if the crowd chooses his stipulation over Texas Death.
I’m also well aware of how the last time Hangman and MJF had stipulations in their match at Forbidden Door. Originally it was MJF talked into using his Instashot for the match. MJF agreed to it. The Dynamite before the match happened? Max kidnapped Mark Briscoe and threatened to set him on fire, which had Page agreeing that the match wouldn’t involve the Instashot and he could lose on DQ or countout.
We could have a similar situation here, where Hangman gets MJF into a Texas Death match, only to later get him to admit he was lying about the stipulation just to put MJF in the match. Is that very babyface to do? No, but it’s also Hangman pulling what MJF pulled on him. He just said the two are very alike. Why not act like MJF into this as well?
That pulls MJF into the Texas Death (I should also add that MJF, for all the good he does as a heel, also loves to babyface himself) where the odds are stacked against him as the heel champion, only to squeak a victory, and out of it a dejected Hangman Page, after admitting how much he’s like MJF, is in an awkward situation going forward. There’s more to mine from that, and it’s why him revealing his similarities to Max was the most impactful part of the promo to me.
There’s a lot of choices to be made. Choices for what stipulation to go with, choices for how the match ends, and choices for how each wrestler moves going forward. AEW has a lot to think about.
