"Hangman" Adam Page Reveals He Had No Idea He'd Be AEW World Champion, Social Anxiety & More

"Hangman" Adam Page was recently a guest on Renee Paquette's Oral Sessions, where he spoke about winning the AEW World Championship.

“I wouldn’t even talk about, at least with my journey to the AEW World Championship as like some grand scheme that was hatched on day one or something like that because it never was, at least to me, it was never that way. When AEW started, I was just a guy that was losing all the Bullet Club multi-man matches. I don’t want to say I was a nobody, but I certainly wasn’t like the main event guy who was suddenly going to be main eventing the first ever title match in AEW. I knew people wouldn’t buy it, and it didn’t matter what I said, it didn’t matter what I did in the time between. It was too fast. It was too soon. I knew people would be forgiving, but I knew deep down they wouldn’t buy it. It felt like I got off on the wrong foot and I wanted to rectify that. I felt like the only way you can is to be vulnerable and to let that loss and disappointment come out over a long time. Every week we would get to TV and it wasn’t like some grand scheme on how we get Adam Page winning the world title. I just would think, how do I feel about this? What would I feel about this, and let’s do that this week.”

Page spoke about his struggles with social anxiety.

“When I was middle school or high school age, I had super bad social anxiety, like diagnosed medication social anxiety. I remember one time sitting at my desk in the middle of taking a test, my entire body turned flush red. I started sweating. Then I would become aware of this is happening to my body. So then it gets 10 times worse. My eyes start watering. I had terrible anxiety when I was high school age. I think wrestling helped me get out of that to an extent because, not that I had low self worth or anything like that, but wrestling was always my passion and where I felt comfortable and what I like doing. Once I was able to do that and see some success in it, being surrounded by 20 people, 200 people, 2,000 or 20,000 people, as that grew, I got more comfortable with that and with myself.”

Finally, he spoke about his upcoming title defense against Bryan Danielson.

“I feel a lot better than I think I would have felt about it a year or two ago. I feel really good about it. I’m excited. Obviously, like anyone in wrestling, I’ve been watching Bryan Danielson for a long time, like since I was in high school finding out there is wrestling outside of what’s on TV, and looking up stuff, he is one of the first people you stumble into. Now here we are about to be across the ring from each other at Winter is Coming. Much like winning the championship was a surreal feeling, I have to remind myself that it’s a very real thing that is going to be happening that I need to prepare for. I do feel good about it. I was able to beat Kenny in less than 30 minutes which is something he couldn’t do. I’m trying to, in preparing for him, remind myself of that and not let the doubt creep in.”