Adam "Hangman" Page bet on himself and his friends, and so far has rolled 7s.
Page was quickly ascending up the Ring of Honor card as a member of Bullet Club and later The Elite ahead of leaving for All Elite Wrestling at the beginning of 2019. While the company wasn't much of a secret before its announcement, Page was still a little tight-lipped about how far out he knew that he'd be moving on from ROH to AEW.
"I don't know! January 2nd, maybe" Page joked, when speaking to Fightful. "Even as we were building up to All In, we all kind of knew we were onto something and had something we had to expand upon. We had to expand upon it now. All In couldn't just be a once a year thing for our BTE fans. We thought it was time to step out on our own. As a group, we felt like we were as a group on the path to something to expand upon. I'm not an executive, I'm not an employee, and that's fine. There's a lot of conversations and meetings that I'm not really a part of. We're all at different points of our careers. I'm 27, and just picked up steam in the past couple of years as a talent and a wrestler. That's where I want to focus my energy and time."
Page was a hot commodity in pro wrestling, with reports that he received offers from both ROH and WWE making the rounds last year. Instead, he joined the likes of Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Cody, SCU and other veterans of wrestling. However, Page admitted that he had to think long and hard about what he'd be doing with his future. In the end, helping facilitate change and progression in pro wrestling for himself and others outweighed all else.
"It'd be a lie if I said I didn't consider anything. Any type of offer put on the table is something I took a lot of time and thought about it. No matter what you do, there's some pros and cons and risks involved. There's some risks involved in what we're doing. We don't own a wrestling ring yet. I think the opportunity to make All Elite Wrestling happen, make it a success, was the best option for me. I hope that my okaying this along with a few other people can help change what wrestling is for millions of fans and wrestlers. I know of a lot of guys whose offers doubled because there's somebody else playing ball now. Knowing that I contributed to that in some way was probably the biggest selling point me," said Page.
In addition to All Elite Wrestling, Ring of Honor and WWE, companies such as Impact Wrestling, MLW, and New Japan Pro Wrestling have also been involved in a perceived talent war with the competition field crowding.
You can see Fightful's full interview with Adam "Hangman" Page above. He'll take on PAC at AEW's Double Or Nothing on May 25, 2019
