Hangman Page is one of the top stars in AEW as one-half of the current AEW Tag Team Champions and a member of The Elite. But his AEW run got off to an auspicious start with a match against Kip Sabian that didn't trend well and many fans feeling he wasn't ready to be in the first AEW World Title match against Chris Jericho.
Since that bout, Hangman has rebounded and found himself as a character, largely because he's simply allowed to be himself.
"Genuinely, I like to just do whatever the hell I want to do and hear what people say about it when I get to the back as opposed to listening to somebody about it upfront. I don't like to listen on the front half," said Hangman on AEW Unrestricted before saying Dean Malenko and other AEW producers do give good advice after matches and segments. "Something's working. I've always felt this way; if you tell a wrestler what to do, you'll get results, but if you leave a wrestler to his devices, they're going to sink or swim, and a lot of times, you can swim a lot better if someone just throws you out there than if they teach you how to do it. Some of the things earlier in my career, and some things in AEW, weren't genuinely my ideas. They weren't, maybe, totally from the heart. When I started doing things in November or December, I knew I had a story I wanted to tell and it came from me. Every single Wednesday is a fight to make sure that what I'm doing makes sense to me and feels true to me as a person. A lot of things you see about my character, yes, there is fictionalization, but it is genuinely real. You can't be me and not feel the way that this character truly feels. That's how I truly feel as a person. I have a story inside of me that I want to get out and this is how you get it out and work through it. Fighting every Wednesday to make sure the things I did or the things anyone around me did makes sense with the story, is what I think makes it good and the insight others around me bring into it as well."
Hangman went on to say that the collaboration process in AEW and on Being The Elite is similar, though there are more people involved in the AEW creative process.
Elsewhere during the interview, Hangman revealed that he shoots and edits his own bits on Being The Elite. You can find his full comments on how involved he is behind the scenes on BTE by clicking here.
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