What makes a good hero? There is no one correct answer for this question as it is all a matter
of opinion as to what you consider to be an example of a good hero. On one hand you have
extremely powerful, idealistic characters like Superman, and, in the realm of pro wrestling,
Hulk Hogan who rarely lose their battles and serve as fairly static characters in their stories. But
on the other hand you also have more realistic characters with many more layers like Joel
from the Last of Us, and, everyone’s favourite anxious millennial cowboy wrestler, Hangman Page.
Both of these archetypes have resulted in massively popular characters and while it once
again comes down to the taste of the consumer, I believe that the latter option offers more
possibilities for unique and intriguing storylines focused around the main character as the focal
point. How do you do that? How do you craft a character that is more than just an idol but
also a tangible and believable character capable of making a lasting impression on the audience
through their imperfections and their journey dealing with them? And more importantly,
how do you do it in wrestling? Thankfully we have the perfect example to analyze.
Cowboys are like onions, they have layers. Since the inception of All Elite Wrestling Hangman Page
has been on a hero’s journey and in the process has become the best babyface in all of pro
wrestling. Now that is a very big statement, but not one that I say lightly. See Hangman Page is,
in my opinion, a perfect millennial babyface. His rise to the top of AEW has been a perfectly
crafted story worth analyzing for a look at how we got to this point. As such I’m Tempest
hailing from partsFUNknown this is how AEW Made Hangman Page a Perfect Millennial Babyface.
Following the excellent show that was Full Gear, Hangman Page is your new AEW World Champion. A
moment filled with catharsis as fans all came together to celebrate the culmination of an epic
three-year storyline. But this was not a storyline where Hangman always shined, he was more than
an average one-dimensional wrestler with a fun gimmick and a catchy catchphrase. He was human,
severely flawed, but still good. It is very rare to see a babyface with such depth in American
wrestling which is the reason I wanted to give Hangman Page’s run in AEW a proper in-depth look.
Page’s story runs from the very first AEW press event in January 2019 until
present day. During this time he promised to become the first AEW World Champion, and failed.
He tried to leave The Elite but the Young Bucks wouldn’t let him. He formed a team with Kenny
Omega and won the Tag Team Championship, only further developing the divide between him and
his friends and resulting in one of the best tag matches of all time at Revolution 2020.
At the same time he began drinking, dealing with his anxiety and lack of self-confidence
in a seemingly fun but ultimately destructive way. FTR preyed upon his insecurities and coerced him
into betraying the Young Bucks before beating Page and Omega for the tag titles, leaving Page
without his friends or his tag partner. He’s hit rock bottom. The Dark Order tried to recruit
him and despite them having his best interests at heart, he refused. He can’t be hurt again.
Page racked up wins because while broken he is still an exceptional wrestler,
beating the likes of Matt Hardy and Brian Cage. He didn’t want to confront Kenny Omega when the
time came for him to be number one contender before the Dark Order convinced him he could
win. They lost to The Elite, causing Page to take time away from the ring,
believing that he was the cause for their defeat. Upon his return, Page put the pieces together,
becoming number one contender and finding the confidence needed to finally achieve his
goals. He apologized to the Young Bucks and beat Kenny Omega for the AEW World
Championship at Full Gear 2021. Holy shit I need a cigarette after just recapping that.
At face value, this is simply a great storyline, however when you dig a little
deeper you can see how much time, effort, care and commitment went into Hangman Page’s journey.
And that’s the first major component of all this, AEW’s detailed storytelling.
While all the things I just covered were the main plot points of the storyline,
the attention to detail is where this story truly shines. AEW is a company that rewards its fans
for paying attention. This goes for Dynamite and Rampage, the Road To shows and Being The Elite,
the latter of which played a big role in the weekly progression of this storyline.
Hangman asked the Young Bucks to be his seconds for his match with Chris Jericho at All Out
2019 but they refused due to wrestling a match earlier in the show. This small moment plants the
seeds of the Page’s split from The Elite months before this started on television. And when Page
eventually did win the AEW World Championship, who was at ringside? The Young Bucks.
Even at the start of the Page’s partnership with Kenny Omega the level of detail is immense.
Keep in mind that Page and Omega have never been super close up to this point. They were
on opposite sides of the Bullet Club Civil War in 2018 and while that detail is not
explicitly stated it makes it much easier to buy into this current story. They are friends,
just not best friends like Kenny is with the Young Bucks and when The Elite is caught in
a love triangle ahead of Revolution 2020, it is not impossible to believe that Omega
could side with the Bucks over his partner because of their preexisting relationship.
Writing a storyline that spans almost three years is very difficult. You need to keep
people’s attention for a very long time and with television every week, holding people’s
attention is not easy. It is this extra level of detail that moves the plot along each week,
even if major developments aren’t happening. This keeps Page from becoming a stale character and
that is very important when it comes to the main character of your story.
While fans were invested in the story and expected Page and Omega to break up as a
team at some point, no one knew when that point was going to be. Therefore you had to
tune in each week to see if this would be the week it happened. In doing so those fans saw
all the small progressions of the story. When FTR offer Kenny a beer and he dumps it out,
Hangman is standing on FTR’s side during the ensuing argument. A small stage direction to
help further the story. This continues with Page congratulating FTR on signing
their AEW contracts and when he finally did turn on the Bucks at the behest of FTR,
there were two glasses sitting on the bar next to Hangman afterward for FTR who never showed up.
Long-term storytelling doesn’t work when all of the big matches take place one after the other.
The audience will get burnt out and you will burn through your material very quickly so instead
you have moments like these to tide the audience over while they wait for the big match or angle.
If you are paying attention, you will get to see more of this story than you would have otherwise.
This also makes many of the more emotional beats of the story mean more when you have that added
context. When Hangman Page tells the Dark Order that he wants to leave the group after their
ten-man elimination match, they are understanding and allow him to leave to sort himself out. This
is a solid turning point in the story but it means more when you consider that The Elite refused to
let Page walk away in 2019. Again you CAN watch these moments individually and appreciate them,
but the most fulfilling way to watch it is by paying attention to these details
because they make Hangman’s character feel so much more well thought out.
However it is not only the promotion’s attention to detail that succeeds in making
Page a perfect babyface for this generation, it is also his character and more specifically,
the depth of his character. This is where the question I posed at the start of the
video will come up again. What makes a good hero? Well, very often in wrestling the top
babyface is forced to overcome a major obstacle in the form of a powerful opponent or group.
Think John Cena taking on the Big Show or The Authority, he is considered heroic because he
is overcoming these seemingly insurmountable odds but all of the conflict is external.
This led to Cena’s character feeling hollow and stale over the years because his motivations never
seemed to reach further than being someone who never gave up. To many he is still a great hero,
becoming the most popular wrestler of a generation, but there is a reason that he
is compared to Superman so often. Their characters are very reminiscent of each other and Cena serves
as another example of that kind of character writing. Compare that now with Hangman Page.
Yes he still has adversaries to defeat because well he is a wrassler,
but the biggest conflict that Page has to overcome comes from within. He is much more
in line with characters like Joel who are more relatable and multi-layered.
Page had made great strides in his character in 2018 thanks to Being
The Elite and was decently popular when AEW launched but he was still the fourth
or fifth most important member of The Elite at that moment. This is something that ate
away at him and it was this insecurity that caused him to try to leave the group in 2019.
It doesn’t stop there either, Page’s character grows and changes so much
throughout this storyline. At the first AEW press conference Page says he wants to be
AEW World Champion but his motivations are pretty one-dimensional. He wants to be champion because
that is what you do as a wrestler which is fine but it didn’t go deeper than that.
Once he moves into his team with Kenny Omega all of the things that are boiling within him
rise to the surface and this is where Page starts to become a great character and,
sure enough, it is where he starts to get really over with the crowd.
Page starts drinking to mask his insecurities and his anxiety about his friends being more
successful than him. While this begins as a seemingly harmless and fun character quirk,
chugging beers with fans after matches, it soon becomes something much more serious.
Page is always seen with a drink in his hand and the booze serves not only as a crucial element
of the plot but as a physical reminder that Page’s internal struggles are getting worse.
Perhaps the most important part of the whole story is when Page betrays the Young Bucks,
costing them a shot at his AEW World Tag Team Championship. Not only because it is a major
turning point in the story, but also because in this story Page is the reason for his own
downfall. It would be so much easier for a babyface to deal with some dastardly thing
a heel had done to them. But think about the added emotion that goes into this story because
it was Hangman’s hubris that caused the negative things to happen to him. Those feelings of guilt,
regret, depression, and loneliness all seem so much more powerful because they are the lessons
that Page needed to learn before he could grow into the man he needed to be to become champion.
A drunk Cowboy sounds like a funny gimmick that you might see on NXT 2.0 amidst the crowd
of Poker Players, Teachers, Italians, Skateboarders and fake social justice
warriors. But Page has something that none of those other characters have,
character. This cowboy is not just a drinker for no reason, it is a major part of who he
is during this storyline which he is finally able to overcome, tossing aside a beer from
the Dark Order and embracing the group after winning the AEW World Championship.
In this generation of mental health being taken far more seriously,
traits like anxiety, depression, insecurities and moderate alcoholism are much more realistic
and relatable characteristics than what we have gotten from wrestling in the past. Page
is one of the most relatable characters in wrestling today and that relatability
plays a considerable role in making him a perfect babyface for today’s wrestling fan.
But what happens when you combine the plot and the character? Well,
you get the story, told to perfection by those involved. The final part of this incredible story
that I want to discuss is the role of failure in the narrative. Failure is a powerful theme in
this story. Each time Hangman loses it drastically changes the direction of his story. This is also
known as wins and losses mattering but some people get upset when you bring up that philosophy.
Page’s character arc kicks off when he fails to beat Chris Jericho at All Out 2019. He loses to
Pac and wants to leave The Elite, he and Kenny Omega lose the tag team titles and
it ends their entire partnership. Page loses to Omega in the finals of the AEW Eliminator
Tournament and you get to see The Elite prospering together as a team while Hangman is left out,
watching dejected from the tunnel. Finally, Page and the Dark Order lose their ten-man
tag match with The Elite and it forces Page to walk away from the Dark Order and take time off.
Every single loss suffered by Hangman Page in this story has consequences which only
help build interest in the storyline but it also helps make Page’s character
even more relatable. Everyone has failed at something in their life. Get a bad grade,
get cut from the team, get rejected from university, or let go from your job,
everyone can relate to the feeling of failure felt by Hangman Page in this story.
This might sound like a no-brainer but just think of how many times you have
seen a wrestler lose a championship match and get a rematch the following week. In
that case the loss had no consequence and might as well have not mattered. You can’t
do that here. In the case of Hangman Page, you cannot remove any of his
losses from the story without drastically changing the trajectory of the narrative.
Every top babyface needs to face some adversity, but that only makes for a good story if the
adversity is allowed to affect the story. Too often if a top babyface loses it merely means
that the payoff to their big storyline gets pushed back to the next pay-per-view with no
added significance for their eventual win. In this case it is the complete opposite. Because
of how much each of Page’s losses affects his story, he is able to grow as a character,
overcome his failures and his own demons, making his win at Full Gear 2021 the most
euphoric moment in AEW history with their perfect babyface finally standing tall.
To sum up, how did AEW manage to take the fourth or fifth most popular member of the
Elite and turn him into arguably the most organically popular wrestler in the world?
They did it patiently, over time with a carefully crafted story filled with character development,
relatable characters and a brilliant ending. How do you make a good hero? You make him feel real.