Hangman Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland
September 7, 2024
AEW All Out 2024
NOW Arena
Chicago, IL
When it came down to picking my match of the year, it came down to a very difficult decision between two drastically different matches. My two 5 star matches of the year were both excellent capstones on the ends (for now) of two great long-term stories. One was about the entire glorious and iconic career of the man called Sting. One was about glorious violence and retribution. One had me smiling more than I can almost ever remember while watching wrestling. The other had me recoiling in horror the most I had in wrestling since….well I guess since the time these two fought a year ago in Texas Death.
Ultimately, I went with the Hangman Page vs. Swerve Strickland Lights Out Steel Cage Match from AEW All Out 2024 as my match of the year for a number of reasons.
One is that it didn’t have the extra help of being a “retirement match” that the Sting final bye bye had. Now—that is nothing against Sting’s final match—remember, we are splitting very fine hairs here between 5 star matches. I mean, there are lots of retirement matches in wrestling and very few achieve the excellence that Sting, Darby Allin, and The Young Bucks were able to achieve in Greensboro that night. But Swerve and Hangman get a little edge for building an incredible long-term feud and for both being near the peak of their careers while they did it.
A second reason is that the bloody feud-ending cage match is one of my favorite match types ever. Many of my favorite matches of all time are cage matches, and for good reason. They used to be the ultimate gimmick match. The steel cage was something to be feared and something to be in awe of. But like everything in wrestling, it was overdone and beat like a dead horse for years. So much so that companies had to invent new types of cage matches like Hell in a Cell to up the ante…and then invent ANOTHER match like an Elimination Chamber once we all got numb to the Hell in a Cell.
One thing that AEW has done well throughout its history is help to bring the steel cage match back to prominence. It has put respect back on the name of the steel cage match. From Cody Rhodes vs. Wardlow in the first AEW steel cage, to the 2021 VOW Match of the Year (Young Bucks vs. Lucha Brothers) to this bloody spectacle in 2024, AEW has, for the most part, reserved cage matches for important feuds (Jon Moxley vs. Kenny Omega, Jack Perry vs. Luchasaurus) or to emphasize major title changes (the aforementioned Lucha Brothers win, and the Thunder Rosa win over Britt Baker in the sequel to their highly rated 2021 lights out match).
Let’s just ignore the barbed wire steel cage match from last year featuring “The Rated R Superstar” COPE.
As I went back to watch this match for a second time recently, I also realized another big reason why this is my match of the year. It’s because this match gives me everything I want in professional wrestling, and, in many ways, is the antithesis of the dominant style in the WWE (and in some cases AEW) that I have come to loathe. The WWE style of match emphasizes drama and “storytelling” in cheap manufactured ways. It breaks the cardinal rule of “show don’t tell.” The WWE style is also all about appealing to the crowd and getting those cheap pops with entrance music, sing a longs, catchphrases, interference, and mid-match promos.
On the other hand, Swerve and Hangman are very rarely focused on the audience. They are focused on each other. From the moment each man makes his entrance they are staring at each other. There’s no posing or choreographed spinning and pointing. They are focused on hurting, torturing, and defeating their rival. The audience often doesn’t react to near falls or other moments with the big pops you’d expect—they react with stunned murmurs and stifled gasps. To many wrestling fans, the “stunned silence” comment has become a code word that we or commentators use to try and cover for a crowd that is bored or simply doesn’t care. That was not the case here, as the audience was clearly invested and had strong audible reactions to many parts of the match. I mean, listen to how loudly the crowd gasps when the camera gets a close-up to the cinder block burn on Hangman’s back after the vertebreaker. But the audience’s reaction was more muted in other parts of the match. That’s because this wasn’t a dumb blockbuster action movie where the violence and explosions are there to create excitement and please the audience.
Many people compare Hangman/Swerve in their 2023 Texas Death match, and in this match to a horror movie—and in many ways, it does have those aspects. But in analyzing the audience’s reaction, it’s more like a drama. The violence and actions at times are part of the story and character, not in ways that make us scream or cheer – but in ways that make us think about what these people are doing and whether it is worth it. It makes us watch more closely and intently. We don’t want to miss what might happen next.
Now, it’s not that Swerve and Hangman completely ignore the audience—but when they do directly engage with the audience, it’s in a meaningful way. A perfect example is Hangman yelling out, “Who’s house?” to get the audience to respond “Swerve’s house” and then immediately pulling out the charred piece of wood from Swerve’s childhood home. Then they evoke the classic Tully Blanchard/Magnum TA cage match by trying to gouge out each other’s eyes. They struggle over the weapon, and then once Swerve takes control, something really struck me: the way Swerve hits Hangman with the wooden stake. It just has so much hate and intensity behind it. It’s not the normal stabbing we see in wrestling with quick little jabs. These are deep – like he is trying to stab all the way through him. Earlier in the match Swerve does something similar with the staple gun. It’s a spot many of us have seen before and has been used many times in this very feud. But Swerve holding Hangman and stapling him the back while laughing and smirking— it’s just done in a way that makes it so much more impactful and disturbing.
People who don’t watch wrestling would probably be disgusted by this. Casual fans, your family members will say, “This is horrible,why do you watch this?”
You know what? Good. This isn’t for them. It reminds me of seeing Kill Bill Vol. 1 in theaters for the first time with a group of friends. During one of the incredibly gory violent scenes in the film (I think it was during the anime sequence, but honestly, there are too many to count). One of my friends, who wasn’t aware of what he was getting into, leaned over and whisper-yelled across our group to me, “what the fuck movie did you make us see?” At the time, I felt a little awkward and bad. But you know what—when Kill Bill came out on DVD, I watched that almost every night for a week because it was such an enjoyable movie. Some of us are just built different.
Getting back to the match—the entire thing has a sense of struggle permeating throughout it that we don’t always get in modern wrestling. There’s nothing that feels overly choreographed. Nothing tongue in cheek. No smirking or playing to the crowd. Just focus on destroying your opponent. From the beginning, they are trying to decapitate each other with the lowering of the cage and you can feel the struggle as each man tries to hold the other below the cage and the other fights like hell to get away. The match is visceral. Violent. Deliberate. I believe it was Tony Schiavone who said on commentary “Torture is going to be the name of the game here.” And he wasn’t wrong. It just feels different. When they throw each other into the cage they aren’t bouncing off with over-the-top bumping. Their bodies grind against the steel like a human cheese grater and you feel it. As the match progresses, the deliberate setting up of spots makes sense within the context of this contest. These men want to torture each other. They aren’t building contraptions for the hell of it like in a multiman clusterfuck ladder match. They are taking their time to figure out how to inflict the most pain they possibly can on each other.
In addition to the incredible work by Swerve and Hangman, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the excellent work by Prince Nana on the outside. His yelling comes through perfectly at many moments as he screams at Hangman, “You stupid idiot. You want to know what happens when you mess with someone’s family?” “You wanna play games with someone’s family?” Those last two lines, of course, dripping with irony, as it was obviously Swerve last year that started this whole thing by messing with Hangman’s family. But even with all his typical yapping and swagger outside, you can see the concern and worry when Nana’s face is on screen. He’s trying to overcome it with his trash talk, but you can tell the violence is affecting him.
And now we get to the closing stretch of the match. I really appreciated that it made sense for Swerve to go to the top of the cage. He needs to take those extra steps to defeat Hangman after he kicked out of all those house calls, including a perfectly shot one that smashed Hangman’s face directly into the cage. Swerve’s mentality has been to punish him as much as he can during the whole match, so of course, he has to go higher than the top rope for his stomp. He has to climb the cage even higher. But of course, that hesitation, that hubris, ultimately costs him. It gives Hangman time to recover and hits an incredible Awesome Bomb from the top. Swerve bounces off the mat with an incredibly loud impact.
Hangman then delivers on the deliberate, disgusting violence they have been escalating throughout the match. He pulls the grill out of Swerve’s mouth and then jabs a needle through his cheek before finishing him off with a brutal chair shot. That final chair shot gets a massive reaction from the crowd.
But interestingly – the bell ringing and match ending does not. The perfect example of the stunned silence throughout the match. The audience isn’t happy that someone won the match—not just because Hangman was the heel here—but because they know they just witnessed unspeakable acts for someone to achieve that victory.
In a year when the biggest and most popular wrestling company in the world got bigger and more popular by focusing on the entrances, finishers, run-ins, and catchphrases that get pops – here is a match that is the antithesis of that. Very little in this match was done for the sole purpose of getting a pop from the crowd. This is the opposite of a shiny plastic WWE main event. This is gritty and real in the best way pro wrestling can be. This was two men focused on destroying each other, not focused on getting pops from the crowd.
And in the end, Hangman won the match, but clearly he lost just about everything else. His sanity. His moral compass. He has nothing left but hatred. Even after the match, while celebrating on the ramp, he starts to head back toward the ring to inflict more punishment on Swerve. He doesn’t know what to do other than fight and attack and hate this man. In the end, he didn’t get closure or fulfillment. But he did learn a lesson.
Hate doesn’t save.
Nothing saves.
