How "Hangman" Page Helped Justify Better Than You Bay Bay

The main character of All Elite Wrestling faced off against the company's primary antagonist on February 19 in Phoenix, AZ. The villain, of course, is Maxwell Jacob Friedman, the bullied Jewish grade schooler who grew up angry and became a pampered bully himself. And the main character, to MJF's exasperation, is “Hangman” Adam Page, the anxious millennial cowboy who, through a combination of progressivism, grit, hard-drinking humor, and a shit-kicking, high-risk wrestling style, has earned his spot as the people's champion of AEW. And in this show-opening promo battle, MJF was not shy in explaining why that drives him nuts.

The segment, which had been brewing for several weeks, was some of the most compelling television AEW has produced in its six years of existence. For twenty minutes, both men dissected the other's character, each a mirror image of the other, and neither telling lies. Yes, as MJF groused, Hangman Page IS the golden boy of AEW. When the company launched in 2019, Page was presented as the star to build the company around – young, charismatic, and badass enough to win AEW's first booked match: a 21-man Casino Battle Royal that he won by last eliminating, of all people, MJF. It's no coincidence they were the last two standing in that match, but Max was also right to state that while Hangman was nearly gifted his spot by AEW owner Tony Khan and his EVPs (and Hangman's pals), the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, MJF had to work more for his spot. Hell, at the first All In, the pay-per-view event that provided proof of concept that AEW was possible, Page had a featured spot on the card when he defeated Joey Janela in just over twenty minutes. MJF was on the show too...in an under-ten-minute opening match that he lost to Matt Cross. “From curtain jerker to World Champion” is something MJF can hang his hat on, and on a surface level, certainly is more noteworthy than Hangman eventually becoming World Champ in a redemption arc storyline that the entire company revolved around for its first two years. Hangman was the chosen one – MJF forced people to pay attention with, as he said on February 19, a scarf and a microphone.

And yet, despite all that, and despite a fall into darkness that saw Page descend into obsessive madness when Swerve Strickland invaded his home, the fans, to MJF's mind, chose Hangman over him. And boy, does that eat him alive.

The whole 20-minute promo in Phoenix is gold, because both men understand both their characters so well. They truly are AEW's two main characters and their long-term arcs have formed the basis of so much of AEW television that it was inevitable that their paths would cross at this point of their journey. And it's a good thing too, because the current Hangman/MJF feud is doing some massively heavy lifting to rehabilitate the most divisive angle of 2023: MJF's friendship with Adam Cole in the tag team known as Better Than You Bay Bay. Hey, let's flash back:

2023 was a weird year for AEW. We won't re-litigate the CM Punk saga here, but the Brawl Out drama of 2022 hung like a cloud over the company for over a year, breaking open and raining down controversy once again at All In London on August 27, 2023, when Punk was fired after the famous confrontation with Jack Perry just before Punk's opening match with Samoa Joe. The backstage chaos overshadowed what was arguably the peak of 2023's primary main event storyline, as MJF successfully defended the AEW World Title against someone who had become his “best friend,” Adam Cole.

Boy howdy, a LOT of people didn't like the MJF/Adam Cole story. The weeks-long depiction of the former rivals' budding friendship (after a 30-minute draw between the two of them in a World Championship Eliminator match, they were randomly drawn and forced to team together in a #1 contender's tournament for the World Tag Team Titles) was criticized by many for leaning heavily on corny vignettes that felt like something out of early 90s WCW. Adam Cole trying to get MJF to play video games. Cole going to a gym with MJF and explaining to him that he shouldn't make fun of the overweight people working out. It was all very WWE in that it focused on low-rent skits over in-ring action, and in-ring is where AEW excels. Much of the criticism of the angle focused on how AEW was straying from its roots and trying to be more like WWE, when WWE has the market cornered on stressing “entertainment” over actual wrestling. The criticisms may have been valid, but when the saga hit the ring, the company's strengths – as well as that of the characters – shone through.

MJF, through the first four years of AEW's history, established his heel persona with certain deliberate character beats. He doesn't wrestle more than he needs to – in fact, many of his feuds have been marked by Friedman forcing his rivals to wrestle a gauntlet of opponents before he would agree to face them. Many of these feuds, also, were triggered by MJF turning on someone he was previously aligned with. His first big feud in AEW was against his mentor, Cody Rhodes. He then joined Chris Jericho's Inner Circle before turning on that group and forming his own (The Pinnacle, which also eventually disintegrated in part due to MJF's terrible treatment of Wardlow). When MJF finally won the AEW World Championship, it happened in part because William Regal turned on champion Jon Moxley, helping MJF win; MJF thanked Regal by immediately attacking him shortly after. MJF just doesn't have a good track record with friendships in a company where the power of friendship is often the driving factor behind its signature storylines.

This all changed during MJF's relationship with Adam Cole. As the two bonded, Cole seemingly managed to break through MJF's trauma like no one before. After one of the much-maligned vignettes, where while playing video games MJF revealed that he's never played two-player games because he's never had any friends to play with, Cole began appealing to MJF's sense of self in ways that no previous associate had. While conceding to the occasional rule-breaking here and there to ingratiate himself to Max, Cole would often deliver pep talks to Friedman and encourage him to be a better version of himself, most notably after a match where the two of them lost a World Tag Title challenge to FTR. That Cole refused to abandon Max after a big title loss seemed to finally crack through MJF's defenses, because for the first time, the lonely bully started to believe that maybe he finally had a real, honest to goodness friend – one who would stick by him in good times and bad. He became so invested in this friendship that when Cole suggested they challenge Aussie Open for the Ring of Honor Tag Titles at 2023's All In (the same show where the two of them were slated to face each other for the AEW belt in the main event), Max agreed. Maxwell Jacob Friedman, the guy who took pride in not wrestling more than he absolutely had to, suddenly was willingly wrestling twice in one night. What the hell, dude. (It could possibly be theorized also that because at March's Revolution PPV, MJF retained the championship in a one-hour iron man match against Bryan Danielson that went into overtime, Max was more confident about his ability to work twice in one night. But I suppose that's neither here nor there). Better Than You, Bay Bay ended up winning the ROH Tag Titles that night, and MJF ended up retaining the World Title by rolling up Cole after a match that at one point almost ended in a double-pin draw.

Shortly after All In, Disaster struck for Adam Cole, as he broke his ankle just a few weeks later at Grand Slam in New York while running to the ring to help Max. This turned out to be the beginning of the end for Max's title reign. He had become so invested in his friendship with Cole that instead of vacating the ROH Tag Titles, Max insisted on defending them himself until Cole could heal. Suddenly, the formerly work-averse Friedman was willingly working handicap matches, or notably, allowing his then-rival Samoa Joe to substitute for Adam in exchange for a future title match. Meanwhile, a mystery man had stolen MJF's devil mask and began causing chaos in Max's life as well, recruiting masked henchman who eventually defeated a tiring Max for the tag belts mere days before he was scheduled to grant Joe his title shot at December 30's Worlds End PPV.

At Worlds End, Max's body finally gave out on him and he lost the AEW World Title to Samoa Joe, who, as it turns out, had been colluding with the Devil to weaken MJF for weeks. And after the main event, a broken, defeated Max finally was confronted by the Devil and his henchmen, who revealed themselves as Adam Cole and his pals, the Kingdom (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett). It was a reveal seen by a lot of fans as a letdown (was the Devil going to be a new AEW signee? Someone returning from injury? No, it was someone who was out of action and couldn't even face MJF in a match until god knows when), but it was the only option that made sense – brilliant sense, in fact:

The reveal of Adam Cole as the Devil revealed that his efforts to befriend MJF were a con all along. Cole's no idiot – he knew that MJF has a track record of turning on the people he works with, so he opted to manipulate Max in a way that would enable Cole to get the jump on him first. The best way to do that? Melt his heart in a way no one had been able to before. Clearly, Cole saw winning the ROH Tag Titles on the All In pre-show as a way to fool Max into putting in work so he was less fresh for the main event; that Max was able to prove that he had as much conditioning and stamina as Cole wasn't something Adam had planned on (he probably should have paid closer attention to the Revolution main event). So when he broke his ankle, he decided that if he couldn't beat Max for the title, well, dammit, he was going to make sure Max lost it to someone. It was known in Internet fan circles that MJF was seriously banged up and was working hurt; that it could be worked into storyline that Cole had manipulated MJF so thoroughly that he was willing to take punishment in handicap matches to defend the tag titles he won with the only friend he's ever had was a bit of shoot/kayfabe kismet. It was, frankly, brilliant goddamn storytelling that played into MJF's history in incredibly clever ways. Unfortunately, that's when the story went off the rails.

After a dramatic betrayal of that degree, the blood feud that should have erupted after could have done gangbusters business. But unfortunately, Cole's ankle was a long way from healing (he would remain sidelined through all of 2024), and MJF desperately needed time off to rehab an injured shoulder. And thus, what could have been a white-hot program with a wounded babyface Max seeking vengeance on the man who broke his heart petered out. Look, it's pro wrestling and these things happen; sometimes an unforeseen injury derails the best-booked plans of wrestling promoters. It's not often that the injury bug ends up derailing both sides of a blood feud. Max came back from injury first, enjoying a brief welcome back from the fans before swiftly turning heel again to feud with Daniel Garcia. A heel Max is his default setting, surely, and after being betrayed by Cole, it would follow that an emotional wound that deep would drive MJF to resolve to never let anyone in again.

The problem was that with MJF once again a despised heel, Adam Cole needed to remain a babyface after his eventual return (and obligatory babyface pop) if they were going to feud. And look – he may be a scumbag, but MJF was absolutely the babyface in this program. This was classic 80s teen movie shit – Adam Cole pretending to befriend the school bully to manipulate him into giving Cole something he wanted, but not counting on the bully actually starting to like him back. Once Cole realized that Max actually had a heart, he opted to rip it out and stomp on it. Cole could cut all the promos he wanted about planning to turn on Max first because he “knew” that Max would do the same if he had the chance. Didn't matter. What Adam Cole did to MJF was heel shit, and with Max not turning babyface for the feud, the story was too muddled to pay off properly at all.

So thank god “Hangman” Page was dealing with his own trauma and conflicted sense of justice at the same time MJF finally moved past Cole by beating him for the Dynamite Diamond Ring. AEW needed a storyline to rehabilitate MJF's muddled character and firmly cement him as the company's main villain once again, and positioning him against the All Elite Protagonist certainly did that. (Adam Cole, on the other hand, has been shuffled down the card a bit, beefing with Daniel Garcia over the TNT title, while his character awaits its chance for some much-needed rehab.) Page, despite working his way into a four-way match with Orange Cassidy, Jay White, and champ Jon Moxley for the AEW World Title at Worlds End, had been emotionally adrift ever since defeating Swerve Strickland in one of the most uncomfortably violent lights-out matches you'll ever see in September 2024 at All Out. While wandering aimlessly backstage, picking fights with Jay White or Christopher Daniels, he was still hearing a lot of boos from an audience that desperately wanted their cowboy back. So when he started bumping into MJF backstage, the fans had their opening. “Hangman” may have been confused as to why the fans still wanted to cheer him – hell, he caved and started entering the arena through the bad guy tunnel right around the time of that lights-out match. But it feels like focusing on MJF has given Page a renewed sense of focus, and a clearer understanding of why the fans will never give up on him.

At Revolution this past weekend, Adam Page defeated MJF in a rugged grudge match that set the tone for a thrilling, violent night. When a piledriver on a chair couldn't keep the Hanger down, MJF finally snapped near the end of the match, melting down and screaming at “Hangman” and at the fans, “Why you and not me? WHY HIM AND NOT ME?” The answer could be found in that promo back on February 19. MJF's entire character is a brick wall of emotional shielding, hiding his true self from the fans, and the fans know it. They know now that MJF is still the scared, bullied little Jewish kid who had quarters thrown at him in grade school. Whether that happened to him in kayfabe, or also happened to him in real life (and we have no reason to doubt that it happened for real), that's just goddamn awful. And when Max began to open up about it in 2023, the fans accepted him, even embraced him, chanting “he's our scumbag!” to the delight of that put-upon little kid. But when Adam Cole, beloved fan favorite, broke his heart, Max couldn't separate him from the fans. He'd never had a real friend before, much less an arena full of them, so if one of them betrayed him, they must all have. Why wouldn't it drive him absolutely insane with jealous rage to see the fans still desperately want to cheer Adam Page after he burned Swerve's house down and stuck a needle through his face? To him, it's the same shit all over again. Why do the two Adams get a pass from the fans? Why do they boo MJF through that brick wall of trauma?

MJF is a character, and the fans know that the real Maxwell Friedman probably isn't as big an asshole as the MJF they love to hate on TV and in the arena. But Max is committed to kayfabe, and is very in control of the image he projects on AEW television. Hangman, though? The fan perception is that the guy they see on TV really isn't all that far removed from Stephen Woltz, the former schoolteacher who uses alt text on his BlueSky images, drives electric vehicles, and loves gardening as much as he hates fascism. When “Hangman” Page says that he has never been anything but honest with the fans, baring his emotions for the world to see, it resonates as true in both the worlds of work and shoot. Of course, this is professional wrestling, and so there must always be a degree of uncertainly, of the neo-kayfabe that says “we know this is a show, but maybe THIS part is real.” But there's an authenticity to the "Hangman" character that the fans have picked up on and embraced, to the the point that "Hangman Did Nothing Wrong" is a social media meme.

On February 19, MJF asked “Hangman” Adam Page, “name one thing you're better than me at, Hangman. Name it!” Page's response?

“I am real.”

Maybe someday MJF will let himself be real, too. He got close, once. But not today.