Adam Page Didn’t Feel He Earned AEW Title Shot Last Year

In an interview with Wrestling Inc, Hangman Adam Page spoke about getting a match to crown the inaugural AEW World champion at All Out last year and how he feels he didn’t earn it. Here are highlights:

On being a cowboy: “I grew up on a farm, tobacco farm. We had cattle as well. So, in many ways, I am a literal cowboy. I grew up working with cows and stuff like that, but I think just kind of the the mythos of what the American Cowboy is and to me, it’s not necessarily about cows or horses. It’s not about boots and spurs. It’s about kind of the sense of trying to figure out who you are [and] where you belong in the world and how difficult, often, that journey is. That to me is the story of what a cowboy is, and maybe I kind of have always seen that in myself [and] in my life.”

On getting placed in Bullet Club: “Man, I don’t know. It was something that I hadn’t anticipated, didn’t plan for. Booking is what got me put with with Matt and Nick and Cody. It wasn’t my decision, and even though I’m sure they had say in that, it ultimately wasn’t their decision either, but we had a lot in common. I think we pushed each other to be more creative and certainly they helped get me off my feet in the wrestling world and kind of get noticed I guess. I guess what we had in 2017-2018 was just nuts. You can’t bottle it. You can’t replicate it. You can’t fake it. It was just magic.”

On getting an AEW World title shot: “I think about how we got to the first ever title match, and Chris Jericho got there by beating the best wrestler in the world at the time and I might say now as well, Kenny Omega. And I got there by getting to enter into a battle royal dead last and eliminating a lot of people who were largely kind of unknown, under known [or] under successful, maybe. So even our paths to the title match didn’t feel equal. I never felt like I earned it, maybe, in the same way that Chris Jericho did, and then getting to be in that title match, obviously, is huge opportunity. And it’s one that I blew, so here we are.”