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HANGMAN PAGE's first Dynamite appearance as AEW World Champion 2021 → 2025

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to the enlightened rpf mind a sports match is equivalent to the balls in a jane austen novel

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men love to be held by the scruff of the neck btw

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Goofy aa thumbnail

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That post about Hangman and his redemption vs Seth and his descent really does got me thinking about how with some wrestlers it doesn't matter what they did, they face turn and everyone accepts it, but others are Eternally Haunted by their actions.

Like how Seth can never shake What He Did To The Shield but Roman can do all the stuff he did for like four years (and often to his own family) and pretty much the only people calling him out on it in kayfabe when he more or less face turned are heels/on the verge of a heel turn.

Or the one I always bring up: Kevin not being able to wash the blood off his hands from every betrayal he's done (ESPECIALLY what he did to Sami his first night in NXT) but Cody being good now is never questioned despite his heel past.

Heck, I'm sure MJF, should he ever try to do a face run again, will probably get dragged for every bad thing he's ever done in his past during it (to varying degrees of rightfully so to be fair and honest). Meanwhile (if he recovers–I'm retiring my dumb "history's greatest monster" bit–I do hope he gets better and isn't forced to retire before he's ready to) Adam Cole (BayBay) can do things like The Devil stuff but come back face and it's treated like "God Forbid BayBays do anything 🙄."

It's just kinda fascinating to think about how kayfabe redemption works/what and whose sins are absolved and whose are not.

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Seth talks about his knee

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swerve posted the video of hangman stabbing mox with a fork to his story and added a blushing emoji that wasn’t on the original post we have never been more back

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Bruh he’s a menace man

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Update from Seth:

Not verbatim! In a nutshell:

His knee was too swollen to tell how bad the injury is so they'll take another MRI in about a week.

He feels like the injury is similar to the one in 2015 and feels like he can come back to wrestling after whatever rehab needs to be done.

His focus is WrestleMania season.

His silver lining is that he's in a better headspace and believes that the roster is in good hands.

Most importantly, that he'll be able to spend time with Roux. His mom is also moving down to LA 🥹

Honestly, I feel so much better seeing him in good spirits. 💕

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some thoughts about hangman adam page, seth rollins and redemption via finding yourself in pro wrestling. etc

i have talked ad nauseam on this blog about how, due to a combination of tragic storytelling and bad booking, seth's inability to understand and really reckon with his identity is crucial to his storyline post shield, and i want to compare that with One Moment of hangman's weekend: his entrance.

hangman comes out of the face tunnel with his old theme, mustache gone. someone on twitter pointed this out: but the camerawork itself is almost shocked; it starts on the heel tunnel, then jolts over to the face tunnel when it realizes what's happening. hangman adam page has Found Himself again, everything about his presentation screams it. it's a return to form for a man who's spent the last year sinking into his lowest lows, and then having to face those lows and crawl up out of them.

i love the moment in the match where he hits the angel's wings- he will carry retiring daniels forever, but he's taking it with him and moving forward. i love the promo with swerve, where both men recognize that it's impossible to forgive here, but that they have both chosen to move forward because it's impossible to live otherwise.

hangman adam page has found himself, irreparably changed but Himself nonetheless. both this and his 2021 world title storyline are so impactful because they're so hopeful. even if you're fucking struggling, even if everything is awful and you think you're awful. you can still fucking make it. you can still be a person worth being. there are no permanent happy endings in pro wrestling (his 2021 title reign certainly ended in a Way), but it's kind of beautiful because that aligns with Everyone's lived experience. that lack of permanence doesn't make life Meaningless.

and. well yeah. this is thematically the opposite of Everything Seth. there are a lot of moments i could point to (and i Have), but i'll focus on the most recent (and in terms of booking quality, the most egregious) example: post WM 40. for seth, WM 40 was about forcibly ending a chapter in his life. the chairshot is a thing that happened a Decade ago, and he's looking to finally find some form of absolution, even if it isn't coming from the deeply flawed person he wronged, and he can move on with his life.

after a decade of failing to atone, of babyface runs that crashed and burned, of not knowing who he is anymore (see: the promo after he stomped out edge's neck, the 2017 promo where he tells hunter he liked himself before he knew hunter), he can finally be a person worth being, and live a life worth living. (i have talked about This Specific Part a million bajillion times, i think this post is probably the most. direct but comprehensive version of All Of It if you're interested). he recreates the scene of that original sin, and he does the selfless sacrifice. cody wins, cody shakes his hand. woohoo.

and then the rest of 2024 happens, and sami accuses him of hurting jey, and they forgive roman, and they forgive punk, and nobody can quite understand why seth seems to have a problem with any of it. every bit of anger is taken as evidence of his inevitable downward spiral, both by the fans and his friends. the february promo he did with cody (wow fork found in kitchen, can't believe i'm talking about that promo) is an excellent distillation of all of this conflict. seth warns cody about what, sigh, the Rock wanting cody's soul (it's been 5 months and i still. okay whatever we'll move past it), and cody points out seth's own hypocrisies and imperfections. it always comes back to the chairshot, to that unerasable crime.

in the months post wrestlemania 40, one thing becomes very clear. no one will ever let seth move on (the question of whether he deserves to or not is, like. let's not touch that for now). so he doesn't. he links up with paul heyman, re-re-re-creates the chairshot with himself as the leader rather than the pawn. his fall became inevitable to everyone, including himself. if seth couldn't look at himself and like what he saw in 2017, i don't think he has since.

holy shit what the fuck was i saying. where am i. okay yeah. seth and hangman both go through the pro wrestling waves of heel-face turns, but i would argue that part of what makes their overarching story arcs good is a sense of internal consistency and the importance of all their history. they're both characters that fall hard and then have to work hard for their redemptions. however, the tones their stories set are completely different. hangman falls and you know that somewhere, no matter how far away, he's going to get back up again, and he will find himself. seth rollins succeeds, and everyone waits for the other shoe to drop.

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Kambula Boys at night, faces smeared with the blood of a massive buffalo they successfully brought down.

Taken in Singita, South Africa Photographed by Janice Katz

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*stops mid eye roll to look into the camera like he is in the office*

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♡ BRONBRON ♡ WWE RAW (JULY 14, 2025)

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AEW DYNAMITE | 05.21.25