Last week on AEW Dynamite the show opened with a planned face to face between Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Hangman Adam Page.
The confrontation would end in violence (which hey, it’s pro wrestling) and the announcement that Hangman Adam Page and Maxwell Jacob Friedman would face each other at Revolution on March 9, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
MJF started this promo the way he starts a lot promos. He lies.
He accused Hangman of screwing him back in 2019 and costing him a chance to become the first AEW Men’s World Champion. Thanks to AEW now on MAX you can go back and watch Double or Nothing 2019 and see that Buy In battle royal match in which MJF tried to slip under the bottom rope to catch Page and throw him over, but made the mistake of not watching for Page’s feet to hit the floor. MJF would eat a Buckshot Lariat and find himself flipped over the top to lose the match.
MJF would claim he had to, “scratch and claw my way back up to the top” which again, is not true. MJF wasn’t at the top back then. It’s a direct conflict of his claims later that the “powers that be” in AEW were handpicking Page if MJF was already at the top back in 2019. He wasn’t. He was a midcard heel with a good reputation coming from Major League Wrestling. He wasn’t a top guy yet. Matter of fact, he was Cody Rhodes dog walker at All Out 2019 wearing Star Trek cosplay for Cody’s entrance. MJF had yet to reach the top.
The first truth he finally tells is beating Page for the first Dynamite Diamond Ring. Why does he spend all that time lying before finally telling the truth? “Why are you talking to me like I don’t know who you are?” quizzes Page when MJF finally ends his rant.
I’ll answer later. Or rather, Page will answer later.
Page points out that MJF doesn’t really express any pleasure in his accomplishes for his wrestling career and asks if the problem is he’s never been able to win over the fans. MJF explodes in rage at the claim, telling Hangman to shut his mouth. Max realizes he let Page get under his skin with that and quickly tried to deny it, saying he didn’t give a damn about the fans.
Arbiters of Morality
Another lie.
“I just think it’s funny that these hypocrites get to decide who is morally redeemable and who is not.”
The entire basis of this program has been built on this. It’s why Max started taking shots at Hangman in promos which led to their confrontations. MJF can’t stand the fact that the fans have never entirely accepted him, especially not the way they accept Hangman Adam Page. Even when he was the top babyface in the company, MJF had to fight critics and detractors calling him a gimmick.
Max brings up the idea of Hangman Page being “the main character of AEW”, something his fans love to say. It’s pretty inside baseball, almost breaking fourth wall to bring up, but it also helps establish that MJF isn’t just annoyed about a pebble in his shoe when it comes to Page. This is something he actively, aggressively, and deeply loathes. The fact anyone would see Page, a guy who hasn’t been Men’s World Champion since 2022, who hasn’t won a title since then aside from his short time inexplicably as the ROH Six Man Tag Team Champ with the Young Bucks (I bet you totally forgot about that until I wrote it), and spent 2024 trying to be the biggest heel in the company and his only achievement to show was winning a match that isn’t counted in the record books against Swerve Strickland.
That’s the man that fans call “the main character” and not someone like MJF who has been there every step of the way, with far more accolades, a much longer title reign, and singles gold since his Men’s World gold in the International/American Championship. Max won his feud with Adam Cole and everyone acted after like Cole won. Hangman Page lost his program against Jay White and got a Men’s World Championship shot out of it.
Max flips out about all of the evil things Page has done since turning and how people will say, “Hangman did nothing wrong” once again pulling directly from the hardcore fans on social media about Hangman Page. Max cares, extremely cares, about the way people will excuse the actions of Page. Of course, those same fans once excused the actions of MJF back in 2022, which directly led to him turning babyface in the middle of his Men’s World Championship run.
Max finally hits a nerve with Hangman when he asks despite the fans loving him if he loves himself. He brings up Page ending the career of Christopher Daniels. Max calls Daniels a worthless talentless hack to get a rise out of Hangman who had been cold with him for most of the promo and it works.
Page defends Daniels and justifies his actions by saying he died a warriors death. Max stays quiet and reads Hangman because he’s trying to find the way to use this against him. “He took care of professional wrestling even when professional wrestling did not take care of him. He’s the best of us. All of us. And it’s men and women like him we have a chance to stand in this ring and don’t you ever forget that.”
Essentially, in turning babyface, Hangman Adam Page has to do more than just let the crowd cheer for him to excuse what he did. Instead, he builds it into a story of finally giving Daniels the redemption he needed to close out his in-ring career. Daniels had been used horribly as an executive stooge, having to do terrible “GM segments” that felt from another company, with Daniels himself looking like Scrap Iron Adam Pearce during it. Having that match with Page is why the crowd was chanting “Fallen Angel” because it did give Daniels that warrior’s death, that moment of redemption, that reminder of what a great wrestler he was throughout his career.
Hangman comes back at when MJF told him he didn’t have the stomach to be the villain by saying MJF didn’t have the stomach to show true selflessness, self awareness, and humility like Christopher Daniels. It was essentially getting to why the fans appreciate Hangman Adam Page and forgive him unlike MJF. Page asks what they’d say about MJF if his career ended, and answers by saying MJF would be called an opportunist and a selfish coward.
“A man who has taken every shortcut he could, chasing the power and glory you thought would win their admiration.”
Paths of Resistance
This gets to the heart of why I said this is about Real and Fake.
The entire character of Maxwell Jacob Friedman is finding paths of least resistance, even if it isn’t the best path to the top. Just recently he had been trying to attach himself to Jeff Jarrett (hey remember that guy) in his quest for the AEW Men’s World Championship instead of just doing it himself. It was a bad plan, it failed, and all he got out of it was having to beat up Dustin Rhodes for taking offence to MJF’s promos.
Hangman Adam Page on the other hand too often takes the path of most resistance. He once lost an AEW Men’s World Championship shot by trying to get his friends in the Dark Order a tag team title shot in the 10 man elimination match. He’s entered multiple tournaments to try to win a shot, and still enters almost any battle royal or Casino Gauntlet that gets put in front of him. He still works for everything, he still fights for everything, and when his goal was to simply cost Swerve Strickland the championship? He tapped out to Samoa Joe in a three way just so Swerve couldn’t win.
“I know what is right, and I know what is wrong, and I tell the truth about it. In five years I’ve probably lied 100 times but never once have I lied to them.”
It’s an old Paul Heyman line he used to ECW fans, so Hangman using it here was odd the first time I heard it, but it’s a good way for him to explain his actions as a heel. He may lie to himself a hundred times, but he’s always honest with the fans. He truly believed he was irredeemable. He truly believed what he was doing was a righteous path. And it separates Hangman and MJF. Hangman will lie to himself. Maxwell will never be honest with himself.
MJF immediately tries to deflect Hangman’s comments by calling him a child and stating he earned everything in his career. It’s here he starts writing his biggest lie yet, a lie that literally contradicts his comment earlier on about having already been at the top and losing to Hangman meant he had to claw his way back up. He calls Hangman the golden boy, the chosen one, with all the propaganda in the world.
MJF claims all he needed was a scarf and a microphone. Max neglects to tell you he was literally Cody Rhode’s young boy when the company started. Cody wrapped that scarf around his hand to break glass and attack Chris Jericho and the Inner Circle. MJF was always destined for greatness no different than Adam Page. Max needs to feel superior to Adam Page. He can’t argue the truth. He has to spin a yarn right in front of Page’s face to get his self esteem back.
“You have earned nothing! I walk better than you. I talk better than you. I look better than you. I dress better than you. I am better than you! You name one thing you do better than me, Hangman. Name it!”
(You’ll notice he never said he wrestles better than him. I guess some bridges are too far to cross.)
One can bother going through all of the things he claimed to pick what’s true or not, but none of that actually matters. What matters was Page’s response. Page could have tried to go through every one of them. Instead he says three words and throws away the microphone.
“I am real.”
Do You Believe?
This is what it’s all about.
It’s not about lies. It’s not about the truth. It’s not even about accomplishments or title reigns or any of that.
It’s about real and fake.
It’s about the fact that the people who love Maxwell Jacob Friedman love the facade. They love the act. They don’t see him as real. No matter how hard he has worked to convince people that the things he says and the way he acts is who he really is? Nobody buys into it. Nobody believes in Maxwell Jacob Friedman, even when he’s cried his eyes and bared his soul. People who dislike MJF? They dislike him for the same reasons others love him.
Hangman Adam Page, on the other hand? He makes you believe. He makes you believe in what he says, what he does, and what he stands for. No matter how many times he loses a big match he doesn’t come off as a loser. No matter how long he stays down we always believe he will get back up. He isn’t considered the main character of AEW based on his accolades, accomplishments, or how he stacks up in the record books. He’s considered the main character because no wrestler has crafted a better journey to follow.
Hangman Page, in his AEW career, has immersed us into his story to mean more than the stories told by others. Maxwell Jacob Friedman, on the other hand, can’t help but make us see the stage and the curtains and remind us we’re at the theatre. To MJF, that’s real. To Hangman? That’s a show.
When these two men look at each other, it’s a reminder of their insecurities. It’s a reminder of how much more they both would accomplish if they had the others super power. For Max it’s his ability to convince himself of anything. For Adam it’s his ability to convince the crowd of anything. But that’s their curse, and that’s what makes people love one over the other.
When these two men step into the ring on March 9 in hopes of settling this score, it’s going to be an important reminder to All Elite Wrestling that the men who should be at the top of the show fighting for the greatest prize in the company are instead fighting for what it means to be real. The top of the card will have an old grizzled vet who should never be ahead of these two on the card getting a title shot he never earned against the Men’s World Champion who continues to claim things his actions never back up. It’s not real at the top. It’s real, right here, between MJF and Hangman.
