The year of the 'Hangman': Adam Page opens up on AEW pride and what it meant to be 2025's best

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The Ballad of "The Hangman" is a long, winding tale, filled with blood and brotherhood, fire and failures, trials and, ultimately, triumph. Adam Page, the man introduced as AEW’s featured babyface from its inception, saw that promise fulfilled in 2025. He pulled himself out from under a dark cloud of self-loathing, broke the Death Rider’s stranglehold on the Men’s World Championship, and even found common ground with his biggest rival. While some of the world’s best won championships and broke records, Page’s ability to make you feel like every match, every segment he touched mattered, are the reasons why his 2025 stood out from the pack when Uncrowned crowned the year's best wrestlers.

For Page, any recognition he gets — such as our 2025 Wrestler of the Year award — is a testament to the talent and crew around him in AEW. Pegged as AEW’s top good guy since the beginning, "Hangman" has been many things: The fresh face in The Elite, the wounded warrior who drowned his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle, the enraged arsonist, and now the team captain. Playing the parts asked of him to the best of his abilities has always been the focus, what comes from that is just the icing on the cake.

“[Being a focal point of AEW] only matters to me in the sense that I'm grateful that wrestling fans or even my peers, watching on or being a part of the shows, can see the things that I've done and appreciate them to that level," Page tells Uncrowned as the year comes to a close.

"I just think of myself [as someone] who goes to work on Wednesday and tries to do the best job that I can with what the day's work includes. ... I don't see myself as the main character of a show. But if that's how some fans take it or some of my peers might take it, I can just be grateful and think that must mean that they think I've done a good job.”

"Hangman" started 2025 with a “New Year, New Me” resolution of sorts. All throughout the previous year, he'd been a bitter, broken man, unable to process how Swerve Strickland — who’d gone out of his way to make Page’s life hell — was now adored by the same audience that'd witnessed all his misdeeds. The feud hit its hottest high in September 2024, with Page burning down Strickland's childhood home — the same home Strickland was finally in a position to purchase back. They eventually found finality in an unsanctioned “Lights Out" steel cage match, which ended with Page injecting a syringe into Swerve’s mouth, and hitting him so hard with a steel chair that it wrapped around his neck, almost as if it were a war medal to celebrate the whole bloody affair.

But that moment is also what likely set Page on his current path.

"Hangman" figured he'd feel some type of joy, or satisfaction, or catharsis, in taking out the person that caused him so much anguish. What Page felt instead, though, was an emptiness, an absence of feeling, so he knew he'd need to find a different way to recover what he’d lost. “I thought I'd be yelling and screaming standing over him and just absolutely triumphant. But I was just broken," Page says. "That's what I really felt, genuinely. I just said, ‘I don't care how I thought I was going to come off in this moment. This is how I really feel as a person right now.’

"That changed my trajectory a lot and carried me into 2025 and managed to make this year what it was for me. But I think that's important to just give in to what you genuinely feel out there. That'll make whatever you do real more than anything.”

After defeating MJF at AEW Revolution this past March, Page tossed his hat in the ring for the Owen Hart Cup tournament. He promptly went on a tear, defeating Josh Alexander, Kyle Fletcher and Will Ospreay in succession, winning the whole bracket. That string of matches likely solidified the in-ring portion of 2025's Wrestler of the Year vote, with Ospreay and Fletcher finishing second and third in Uncrowned's poll, respectively. Page is quick to give both men credit and praise, unsolicited, when reflecting on some of the people he felt had great years as well.

“In terms of his athletic ability and his ability to rise to the occasions he found himself in because of that ability, [Fletcher’s] been tremendous," Page says.

"I think for a lot of our fans, [Ospreay is] the most exciting person to watch in the ring … Assuming he heals well and can get back to moving the way that he always has, I'm excited to see what '26 and '27 looks like with him around. And getting to wrestle him was an absolute pleasure. It was way more important to me, personally and professionally, than I thought it would have been. He's incredible.”

Quality matches can, and do, come from all over every place and promotion in wrestling, but that added effect — those moments you make special — are the things that elevate you from the crowd.

Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes, who finished fourth in Uncrowned's Wrestler of 2025 voting, had a year full of them, from shunning The Rock’s desires to putting on the best match of John Cena’s retirement tour at SummerSlam. Our fifth-place finisher, Gunther, entered the year as WWE World Heavyweight Champion, helped elevate Jey Uso to true main-event status at WrestleMania 41, and defeated Cena in his retirement match, making Cena give up for the first time in more than 20 years. But Page’s story, of truly becoming the guy, needed that one true obstacle that seemed insurmountable — and that came courtesy of the Death Riders' frontman, then-AEW World Champion Jon Moxley.

After retiring Bryan Danielson in October 2024 at WrestleDream, Moxley quite literally locked away the AEW World Championship, sticking it in a briefcase and hauling it around like the suited, booted, late Rick Rude. Along with his stable, he held the title in a death grip throughout the first half of 2025, defeating and beating down all challengers with the Death Riders' no-rules, strength-in-numbers approach. So many things had to break Page’s way to have a real shot at defeating Moxley for the title at July’s All In pay-per-view, and all of the goodwill — or ill will — the two had created up to that point came to fruition during their match. Broken glass, barbed wire and a bed of nails were just the appetizers, with the parties most offended by Moxley and his circle — namely Danielson, Ospreay and Darby Allin — coming to Page's aid. Ultimately, Strickland, the man who’d set "Hangman" along his path of rediscovery, slide Page the metal chain that had been the symbol of their blood feud, which Page then used to clothesline and literally hang Moxley over the top rope, causing Moxley to finally concede the championship.

It was extra and extreme, but also the very best payoff for Page’s journey, adding to all of the effort Moxley put into making the company’s top title more valuable than ever.

“I guess I don't want to get overzealous in trying to praise Jon Moxley. I think the things that he did [in 2024 and 2025] were abhorrent. But you can't create the catharsis that I feel like me winning it All In was, without that," Page says of the saga that also won Uncrowned's Storyline of the Year.

"He wasn't a rival or a nemesis in the way that Swerve was to me personally. But for the entire roster, he was that person. For the entire company, he was that person. I had the opportunity to dethrone him. It felt like it was less about me — that moment was less about me and more about all of us together. And just to be the person, to be in that position, that was important to me. Years removed from now, I will appreciate all of that maybe more than I do now, being so fresh from it. But you can't achieve anything without some obstacle, and he was the ultimate obstacle this year.”

If the ‘21 and ‘25 versions of "Hangman" Adam Page ever met, they’d likely just sit with one another, quietly, and allow their counterparts to take a moment to breathe. Page won the AEW Men’s World Championship for the first time in November 2021, and genuinely feared he’d never see it again. So when he finally got back to that place, he made sure he could share it with the people closest to him. "Hangman" can always go back and watch his title win, but it's the aftermath — the walk backstage, to the post-show press conference — that stays with him. That long walk and wind down from his most important moment of the year.

With a noticeable tremble in his voice, Page's words feel tight and stunted, acknowledging the sacrifices those closest to him made over the years. “I'm weird about family coming to shows because I probably work too hard on trying to separate, this is my professional life and this is my personal life," he says.

"All my family [was] insisting on coming to Texas. I end up flying like half of my family to Texas [for AEW All In]. Thankfully, we've got some people working backstage who knew them, immediately [after my title win] got them backstage, so they didn't have to fight their way back there. I was greeted by some of the roster, initially. Then getting down through the tunnel, just by my family. My wife, who's seen me go through everything that I've been through in the past several years, my mom and dad, who've supported me since I was a kid and wanted to be a wrestler — they have fought to make that happen for me. To see them, see how proud of it they were, that was the really important thing to me.”

Even then, Page’s ability to convey all of his emotions at once radiated — his pride in winning, his pain in persevering, the appreciation for his station. He was still bloody, exasperated, with his mind on all of his obligations, both professional and familiar. “I'm covered in blood. I'm trying to get cleaned up a little bit because I know I have to go to this press conference," he remembers. "I know I'm going to have to do photos, I'm going to have to do interviews, I'm going to have to do all the other things that follow a moment like that. I know I haven't slept in three days, and I know tonight's not going to be a night I sleep either. I know my kids are back at the house that we had rented for the week, and I just want to get back to them.

"There's a ton going on, but ultimately, it's just pride. Not even pride in my accomplishments, but pride in the accomplishments of the entire company, what we had managed to do.”

What may be the best part of "Hangman" Adam Page’s 2025 is that there’s a 2026 looming. He’s not satisfied with his wins or the moments he created. What separated Page from the others in the running for Wrestler of the Year was all of the things that built to his redemption — the struggles, the transformation and realization of someone who could have coasted from the very beginning. And in 2026, he’s looking to continue to right each and every ship he’s sent out to storm.

“There were a lot of people who made sure that we could free that championship from the briefcase that it was in," Page says. "There are a lot of people who fought alongside me and had my back to clear the way, to make sure that at least a fair fight could happen at All In that night.

"I didn't get through all those people. I didn't get the chance to defend it against Darby Allin. I didn't get the chance to defend it against Will Ospreay. I didn't get the chance to defend it against Swerve. We've had a number of one-on-one matches, and they have all been very important in their own ways, but not once has a one-on-one between the two of us been for the World Championship. That was something that, especially after what he did at All In, that I intended on doing. My only choice now is to win the championship back and continue that, and start to plan for those defenses.”