Exclusive: From teacher to AEW World Champion, ‘Hangman’ Adam Page is still full of surprises

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Exclusive: From teacher to AEW World Champion, ‘Hangman’ Adam Page is still full of surprises

Andrew Korpan, ClutchPoints · ClutchPoints

Fri, Nov 21, 2025 ·

9 min read

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The post Exclusive: From teacher to AEW World Champion, 'Hangman' Adam Page is still full of surprises appeared first on ClutchPoints .

In the year 2025, "Hangman" Adam Page is AEW World Champion for the second time and about to defend the title against Samoa Joe at the forthcoming 2025 Full Gear PPV .

While he's one of the biggest badasses in the promotion, you may be surprised to know that Page is currently in his gardening era. Now that he owns land, he has gotten knee-deep into the hobby, which he calls "therapeutic."

"I'm super into gardening right now — this is my thing," Page revealed to ClutchPoints ahead of Full Gear . "I've got—I wouldn't say a huge amount of land, but I've got a little bit of land, and I've really [gone] down the rabbit hole in the past couple of years with native gardening and cultivating native species in the yard."

He's still improving at it, but if his career is anything to go off of, he will become a master of the trade soon enough.

A teacher-turned-pro-wrestler

Another thing that may surprise you is Page's past as a teacher. Long before the inception of AEW, Page worked as a teacher for several years while hustling in the wrestling industry.

As he notes, Virginia isn't necessarily a hot spot for aspiring pro wrestlers. So, he'd have to drive to nearby states, such as North Carolina, to connect with those in the industry.

Even if Virginia wasn't able to get his foot in the door, per se, the hustle helped him connect with people who advanced his career.

Being in his home state also allowed him to teach on the side. Page, whose modesty showed throughout our interview, wouldn't confirm or deny if he was the "jacked" teacher at his place of work, but he called his work-wrestling balance a "great setup."

"I was, for most of the day, teaching off-campus at the community college, teaching high school kids who would take a five or 10-minute bus ride to the community college for my class, there might've been like one other class there at the time," he explained. "I was pretty removed from the rest of the teachers. "It [was like I] kind of had free rein."

Why teaching is the perfect career for aspiring wrestlers

For all aspiring wrestlers, consider teaching.

"Teaching, as a profession, lends itself incredibly well to try and pursue wrestling as a career," he claimed before explaining. "You had summers off, holidays off, [and] you had weekends off. So I could travel and come back."

Now, there are some potential consequences. Page conceded that some of his students would poke fun at his physical ailments when he showed up on a Monday after a busy weekend of ass kicking.

"My students would always make fun of me when I came back with a limp or a black eye or whatever it was," Page remembered fondly with a chuckle. "It was a great job to have to pay the bills while I tried to pursue wrestling further."

Admittedly, the hustle sounds crazy, as any hustle does. Driving several hours south to do wrestling shows in between lesson planning and grading papers would be exhausting. But it doesn't sound like Page would change a thing about his journey.

"I mean, it was what I had to do at the time," said Page, "so I did it all happily. It was exhausting to teach and then [on] Friday, hop in the car and drive to Charlotte or to whatever and do a weekend loop."

Eventually, it escalated, especially once the AEW World Champion began working for Ring of Honor. That required "flying around the country" on weekends. Once again, he still wouldn't change a thing.

"To come back Monday and have to have done lesson plans and prepare for a week of teaching and [be] right back at it, [it] was pretty exhausting," he admitted.

"Hangman" Adam Page now defends the AEW World Championship against Samoa Joe at Full Gear

Now, Page has to prepare to defend the AEW World Championship against Samoa Joe. This isn't "Hangman's" first rodeo against Joe; he just successfully defended the AEW World Championship against him at WrestleDream just over a month ago.

This time around, though, they are facing in a steel cage match, which will (hopefully) prevent any potential interference from the Opps (Katsuyori Shibata and Powerhouse Hobbs).

"I'm very excited that this has turned out to be in a cage," Page boldly declared. "Hobbs ain't climbing into a cage. It is me and Samoa Joe, one-on-one, where I will once again have the chance to prove to him that I'm the better man with them [the Opps] locked out of the ring."

It's all a mental game. Joe has spent months proving that he's a worthy challenger for the AEW World Championship. However, Page thinks it's "selfish" and a "very nihilistic way to look at what he's done throughout the year."

Like many faction leaders, Joe has become comfortable hiding behind his stablemates like Shibata and Hobbs. Wrestling him won't be easy, but Page is going to give it his all.

"He's a big son of a b***h," Page said of his Full Gear opponent. "[It's] like wrestling a fridge. You can't really pick a fridge up, [and even] if you can, you can only pick it up for a second or two."

Joe is like "wrestling a fridge that swings the freezer door back at you and knocks you in the face," as Page eloquently put it. He's beaten him before, so he has a strategy. Plus, he has a history inside steel cages, so Joe may have to study the tape.

Taking a "leap of faith" with AEW

Nowadays, AEW is one of the biggest wrestling promotions in the world. However, its success was never guaranteed. Page has been with AEW since its conception, and he is one of the company's biggest homegrown talents.

Even Page acknowledges that it was scary. He didn't have a long history with Tony Khan, AEW's founder, and the company was a completely new idea. In short, there was no safety net.

"There was no proof yet of what this would be," Page said in reflection. "But myself and everyone else involved with getting AEW off the ground—the [Young] Bucks, Kenny [Omega], Cody [Rhodes]—and [this] trickles all the way down to everybody else involved in getting this off the ground, we had always been people who had been successful on betting on ourselves."

Once again, these guys had to bet on themselves to make AEW a success. AEW started in 2018 with a pay-per-view titled All In , a star-studded affair that even included names like Rey Mysterio.

The Tony Khan effect

Working for AEW means that you work extensively with Tony Khan. As fans, we view wrestlers as larger-than-life, and that extends to the promoters.

However, Khan, a longtime wrestling fan, is "just a nice dude." Before signing with AEW, all of Page's knowledge about Khan was gathered via a Google search. Page is no kiss ass — "I don't like to overly talk about the boss," he pointed out — he just genuinely likes the dude.

"I just Googled [him] and knew he was a billionaire," Page admitted. "I think the thing that surprised me, in a pleasant way, was that he's a person like me; I can say this very truthfully, [he's] a great person to work for, [and] he is a great person to work with."

His AEW Hall of Fame ballot

Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images

Eventually, AEW will have a Hall of Fame. Of course, several homegrown stars and legends have competed inside their ring. Page, already a two-time AEW World Champion, is a humble guy, and he wouldn't elect himself to it. "If you're lining up the people who have been important to AEW, I'm not gonna include myself," said Page.

So, who would he include? Page named the Elite stable as a whole. That means the Young Bucks' Matt and Nick Jackson, and Kenny Omega are in. He'd also include Rhodes, who has since left for WWE and is their top champion, like Page is for AEW.

The reason being that without the Elite, there'd be no AEW. "Aside from Tony himself, they're the reason this place exists," Page rationed.

Including the Elite as one entity means there are several spots still open. "For better or worse," he would go with Jon Moxley. Similar to the Elite, Moxley has been there since the first-ever Double or Nothing PPV.

When would Page make it? Would it be on the second ballot? It doesn't sound like Page thinks it's up to him. "How am I supposed to answer that?" he said, chuckling. "I can't answer that. It's not up to me in this hypothetical. I don't get to vote for myself."

What's next for AEW's "Hangman" Adam Page?

The bet paid off, as Page is a full-fledged member of the AEW roster. He remains one of their biggest stars, and it wouldn't have been possible without his teaching gig and subsequent "leap of faith." Page lamented that his time with AEW has "not exceeded, but surpassed my expectations for what All Elite Wrestling would be."

Going forward, Page is confident AEW still has lots of great wrestling to offer, and six years in, they're just getting started. "I think it's gonna be even better for a long time to come," Page concluded.

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