Hangman Adam Page beat Jeff Jarrett in a Lumberjack Strap match this weekend on AEW Collision: Grand Slam in a match I felt fell below expectations.
For starters, it wasn’t the main event. It’s actually a good thing in hindsight, since the AEW Continental Championship match between Sammy Guevara and Kazuchika Okada was the best match of the night. But this should have been the main event based on importance. It was only a few weeks ago that Hangman Page beat Swerve Strickland in the main event of All Out. Perception is important.
Second, the match bordered on comedy at times with the lumberjacks not seeming to take it serious aside from The Dark Order. We sure see a lot of Dark Order lately in Hangman Page segments and matches. Maybe have him finally wrestle Evil Uno, Alex Reynolds, or John Silver sometime?
I had an expectation for a more serious match, and with this being a bit more on the loose gimmick side just didn’t work. It also had technical difficulties but that’s not the fault of the competitors, and with FITE users saying the show was fine, it might not have been AEW’s fault either.
What I thought was going to be a good fill in for Hangman before they can put in something more serious, it feels like the momentum of the All Out match with Swerve is already starting to cool down. Swerve Strickland is nowhere to be found, Prince Nana is now feuding with MVP, and Hangman Adam Page has no real motivation or goal aside from being angry at the world. It worries me that AEW isn’t considering Hangman a priority because they are putting all of their chips in the number one contender: Jon Moxley.
Slow Chemical
I hate to make this comparison, because comparing AEW to bad stuff WWE did is cliché and overdone, but it reminds me of when WWE unmasked Kane in 2003. He lost a World Heavyweight Title match to Triple H and somehow taking off his mask made his hair fall off. He immediately turned heel and attacked his tag team partner Rob Van Dam. RVD and Kane would feud all summer with Kane beating Rob Van Dam at SummerSlam.
Kane couldn’t be the number one heel because that was the World Heavyweight Champion Triple H. But at number two, it makes sense to feed whatever babyfaces are not about to face HHH to him, right? You take the guys who can eat a loss and have Kane beat them convincingly until it’s time to have him move up, likely when Triple H drops the title.
At Unforgiven, Kane didn’t face Bill Goldberg since he was in the main event with Triple H (and defeated him.) He didn’t face Shawn Michaels or Scott Steiner or Kevin Nash. He faced Shane McMahon. Who went 19 minutes against him. They continued to feud all the way to November at Survivor Series in an Ambulance match. Kane would get a World Heavyweight shot at Armageddon but he couldn’t even get a one on one. Triple H versus Goldberg versus Kane. And Triple H won. He didn’t get pinned at least so he’s being protected. He’s gotta be winning the Rumble right? Nah he gets eliminated by Booker T. So what’s this all leading to? Kane to lose to The Undertaker at WrestleMania XX. Kane finally got his big title shot almost a year later at Bad Blood 2004 against Chris Benoit and loses. He eventually feuds with Matt Hardy and kind of turns babyface in the Lita/Gene Snitsky/Edge angle and by this point it’s pointless to recap.
The point I’m making doing this recap is that WWE had a two heel situation. They had their number one heel in Triple H. AEW has a number one heel in Jon Moxley, whose similarity to Triple H is that he has his own Chyna in Marina Shafir. So they got the number one heel. The number two heel is Hangman Adam Page. He just headlined All Out and beat your former AEW Men’s World Champion, even if the match doesn’t count in the record book we all know it happened. What does AEW do to keep him hot?
They have him deal with unfinished business with Jeff Jarrett to end that program which didn’t need to be revisited. This is essentially his Shane McMahon story. It’s keeping Hangman busy because they can’t have him interfering with Jon Moxley in the main event but it’s also keeping him out of anything important in the eyes of the fans. Again, no longer a priority.
Noose The Juice
I would have been fine with this if the match at AEW Collision Grand Slam was treated like a big deal. It felt like a big deal priordue to the Evil Ways video. But the Lumberjack Strap stipulation looks to be done for two reasons: the first is to gimmick the match up for Jeff Jarrett. The second is to set up the match with Juice Robinson on the 5th Anniversary of AEW Dynamite.
First, gimmicking up for Jeff. I don’t think he actually needs it. I think Jeff is good enough to go with Hangman Page without needing the lumberjacks and straps and ballyhoo. We didn’t need the Karen Jarrett spot. We didn’t need a balls punch. We could have had what I described in Jeff Jarrett Survives. It’s Jeff Jarrett dying for the right cause, the most babyface thing he can do.
Instead the match bordered on comedy, which is absolutely the wrong tone for Hangman Adam Page right now. We don’t need Jeff Jarrett doing top rope dives. We don’t need the hugs with Satnam Singh and Jay Lethal. Just let Jeff Jarrett, a crafty veteran, be the old man at the end of the line. Let him lose physical battles with Hangman Page and use his intelligence to goad Hangman into going on the outside where the wrestlers are more willing to attack Page than Jarrett with the strap. Make this all about just trying to exhaust the devil before the devil finishes you off.
The best moment of the match ended up right at the end, when Hangman decided to attack the Bang Bang Gang, specifically Juice Robinson.
Hangman hung Juice with the leather strap, even if just temporarily, it made an enemy out of him and the Bang Bang Gang. This set up the match at 5th Anniversary of AEW Dynamite, which I wonder if this leads to the return of Jay White. Jay White and Adam Page have a lot of history, going all the way back to New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Jay and Hangman would present a different challenge. How do you have a result that benefits both men? Jay White has taken a few too many losses and needs to rehabilitate himself after the messy program with MJF last year. Hangman Page really can’t be taking losses. How do you have these two face each other without one losing something?
It’s a difficult needle to thread. If it was up to me? There’s a guy, an upper card babyface who doesn’t have a singles program right now, who is stuck in a program with The Learning Tree. He isn’t needed for it. He could instead have a major program with Hangman Adam Page and if he loses it’s okay because he doesn’t have a plan at the moment. They also faced each other at the Casino Gauntlet at All In and it was a minute of magic. I talked about it in the Fallout from All Out.
Yes, I’m talking Orange Cassidy.
Flint For A Spark
When flint is struck by steel it creates a spark. That spark can create fire. Hangman is the steel shot found in a Buckshot.
Jeff Jarrett is not going to make fire for the Hangman. Jay White might, but it’s risky because he needs to rebuild himself. I’m happy for Juice to get the match with Hangman just because I want to see him get more opportunities but he isn’t going to create a fire for very long.
Orange Cassidy can be that flint better than anyone on the AEW roster right now. Hangman and Orange Cassidy have never had a feud or even a singles match. They’ve been in a few battle royals together. They were in the Casino Ladder Match that Hangman won in 2021 which led to his AEW Men’s World Championship win. Adam Page and the Dark Order did defeat The Best Friends in the AEW World Trios Tournament, the longest they’ve been in the ring against each other.
Until Trent returns, Orange Cassidy is looking to not have much of a plan. He isn’t going after a singles title. He is feuding with Chris Jericho but the focus is already on Chris Jericho facing Mark Briscoe for the ROH World Championship. Orange Cassidy doesn’t really have a permanent dance partner.
I think OC and Hangman could go to Full Gear with two full pay per views of hot matches that the fans will care about. It will help Orange Cassidy as it will show he can hang with Adam Page, just like it helped Swerve Strickland last year. It will help Hangman Page because it will be a feud without Swerve Strickland that people can care about, and the winner of the feud will be a definite contender for the AEW Men’s World Championship.
But this is just me hoping. Right now it looks like Juice Robinson and Bang Bang Gang, and potentially Jay White after. After that? I’m worried they just go back to the Swerve Strickland well, instead of having a set goal for Hangman to eventually get to the main event and face whoever is the AEW Men’s World Champion at the end of the year.
The less he makes me think of Kane? The better.
