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In this massive week for Hangman X Swerve, with the viral moment of arson last Wednesday, and the climactic Cage Match on Saturday, I am very proud to (Finally!) present the next part of the Blood Feud series, deeply analyzing the metaphors and underpinnings of one of the best and most intriguing wrestling feuds of all time, Swerve Strickland X Adam Page. This "Act" covers the time after the Texas Death Match up to Hangman's suspension:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
The Hangman ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Adam Page
"Swerve" ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Scott Strickland
The Prince ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Nana Bandoh
怪獣 (a kaijū) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Nuufolau Joel Seanoa "Samoa Joe"
SCENES
ACT I ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... AEW wrestling shows in arenas in Indianapolis, Denver, Seattle, Independence ... in Houston's Graffiti Park, Page's home in Aaron's Creek & an AEW show in LA
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... from mid-September to mid-November 2023
ACT II ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... One horrific night in LA (or Hell) Nov 18 2023 at the Forum
ACT III ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... AEW wrestling shows in arenas in Minneapolis, Montreal, Newark, Jacksonville, Charleston, New Orleans, Rio Grande Valley, Phoenix, Huntsville, and Greensboro
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... … ... ... ... ... ... ... from late November 2023 to early March 2024
ACT IV ... ... ... ... ... AEW wrestling shows in arenas in various cities … and Swerve's childhood home
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... … ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... from early July to Sep 7 2024
Our Story so far...
In Act I, Swerve Strickland told us about having spent ten nights in a coffin, wherein he had clarified his purpose… leading him to challenge the Hangman for his station. Then Adam Page told us about the raincloud sent by a vengeful God that had washed away his lifeblood, leaving him a pale reflection of himself. Later, Hangman used his enemy's blood to sign a pact between the two of them on the terms of hostilities. Page then entered enemy territory and lost his first battle to Strickland. The crooked way that Swerve and his chancellor Nana had stolen this victory led Hangman to resolve to stop Strickland from using corrupt tactics to capture AEW gold. So Page then blocked Swerve's attempt to collude with the Prince to steal a TNT championship opportunity. Swerve looked to balance the scales—or perhaps raise the stakes to pressure the Hangman to fold—by invading Page's home and directing threats and claims of a lifelong debt of gold toward his infant firstborn—as if he were a wicked fairy. In response, Hangman invited Swerve to step into Hell—specifically his violent signature match: the Texas Death Match, where the premise is to brutalize each other with no holds or weapons barred till one man can't stand back up.
In Act II, Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland waged all-out war. Page got the early advantage: binding Swerve's wrists, then piercing his flesh with staples and wounding his forehead. He tortured his nemesis for six straight minutes, including pouring the blood from Swerve's head-wound into his mouth. Finally, Strickland connected with a kick to the crotch, allowing Nana to free his hands. When Page attempted the staples again, Swerve was unfazed—he was beyond pain. Both men had made horrifying, blood-soaked monsters of themselves in their will to prevail. After untold further atrocities, finally Strickland ambushed Page with a cinderblock, then strung him up with a chain and hanged the Hangman. Swerve had won out, but the two men had also established a strange bond that would change both their lives forever: blood-brotherhood.
"...bound by something bigger than either of us."
It is November 29th and the AEW Dynamite show is emanating from Minneapolis, the town where, almost exactly two years prior, the Hangman Adam Page had finally succeeded in his long quest to become AEW World Champion… but Page hasn't been heard from since his Texas Death war against Swerve Strickland a week-and-a-half prior. Strickland on the other hand, in spite of bearing his wounds from that war, had immediately entered a grueling and prestigious round-robin tournament.
[Check out what I had to say about this tournament at the time in Deep Dive 7 | A Continental Classic Explainer]
Caught backstage by a candid interview crew right after his second weekly tournament victory in a row, he gives this highly revealing and relevant interview:
These scars were left behind by Hangman Page in our WAR of Texas Death match, at Full Gear in Los Angeles. I'm gonna carry these with me the rest of my life. Just like he drank my blood from my forehead, he's gonna carry me with him the rest of his life. We're bound together for a long time. I'm never gonna forget that.
—Swerve Strickland
One week later, on the following Dynamite show in Montreal, interviewer Renee Paquette is waiting outside a dressing room to try to get an interview with the AEW World Champion, when a surprise-returning Hangman brusquely crosses her path, and gives an impromptu interview because he wants to send Swerve Strickland a message:
Swerve, you broke into my home. You went into my son's room… It took Prince Nana, it took Brian Cage, but you beat me in a Texas Death Match on Pay-Per-View… I can concede, I can recognize when I have lost… and you have beaten me. ... ... ... But Swerve, at Full Gear, I took something from you, that you will never get back. And I think we are bound by something… bigger than either of us. ... ... ... And I think that you should know… that this is not over. Swerve, I know what you want more than anything from this life. And I promise, because of what you did to me? I will make sure that you NEVER… have it.
—Adam Page
[Check out what Peter had to say about this interview at the time in #AEWeekly #97]
That's two weeks in a row where first Strickland and then Page each speak of the blood Hangman drank from Swerve as creating some sort of symbolic or metaphysical bond between the two men. In my analysis of the Texas Death Match in Act II of our story, I make the claim that this connection is a result of the conflict caused by each man attempting a shamanistic ritual, and their mojos getting tangled—but I freely admit that is highly speculative!
And, interestingly, Swerve speaks of his blood in Hangman in terms of something Page has to carry with him, just like Swerve has to carry his scars. Whereas, Page speaks of it as something he has taken from Swerve, that Swerve can never get back. This is not necessarily a contradiction: think of the different perspectives Gollum and Frodo had on the One Ring!
But beyond all the speculation, what is plain fact is that after the blood incident at AEW Full Gear the two men could now be considered: blood brothers.
"Well, I got more than a drop!"
When the Hangman poured the stream of blood from Swerve's head into his mouth, it would not technically be correct to claim that he vampirically drank his enemy's blood. Because moments later he sprayed the blood into the air—perhaps symbolic of Page rejecting Strickland's essence more than anything.
On the other hand, the Hangman must have swallowed at least a drop or two of Swerve's lifeblood, one would think… and how much does it take? To address that exact question, I turn to a piece of literature that undoubtedly makes for the most bizarre parallel to the Hangman X Swerve feud I have yet to discover while researching blood symbolism: Show Boat.
Show Boat is a cultural artifact of the United States of a century ago that is almost incomprehensible viewed through a modern lens. To the extent it is remembered at all today, it is for its overture and most popular song: the faux-spiritual "Old Man River," popularized by the stentorian tones of Paul Robeson.
But at the time of its debut on Broadway in 1927, it was revolutionary, even epochal, for musical theater. It was the first musical production with a racially integrated cast, and also the first Broadway musical to tackle serious themes, including racial injustice. On the flipside: even at the time, some critics took issue with the use of black vernacular believed to reinforce malicious stereotypes, and even moreso with the use of a racial slur—the racial slur—both casually by the black characters, and as invective by a couple of racist white characters. [1] Naturally, these issues have only grown more disconcerting as the decades have passed.
Show Boat is the fundamentally sentimental story of the cast and crew of a floating theater troupe that follows the harvest North up the Mississippi each season to ply flush and bored farmers with live entertainment over the course of the decades from the 1880s to the 1920s. But our specific interest lay with just one brief scene featuring a few drops of blood.
The set-up:
Steve and Julie are a married couple who play the lead roles in the productions that the show boat puts on. Pete is a troublemaker among the crew who has been hitting on Julie, as well as darkly implying that he knows a secret of hers, and that she should acquiesce to him to avoid it coming out. When Steve comes to his wife's defense, Pete runs off… with nefarious intent.
The scene:
The players are rehearsing when a member of the crew named Windy breaks in on them with urgent news. Windy is portrayed as extremely perceptive and well known up and down the river for his unshakable honesty. He lets them know that he's seen from the lookout that Pete is stomping back towards the boat's landing and has the sheriff in tow. The boat's captain and owner, Andy, is unimpressed, saying: let him come, his license is in order.
But Windy makes it clear, without coming out and saying it himself, that he has a pretty good guess what Julie's secret is, the fact that Pete has now spilled it, and he knows that Steve knows, too, and so this is the couple's fair warning to take whatever steps they want to take.
Julie clings to her husband in anguish over the situation, but Steve has a brilliant last-gasp plan. Here is the startling and somewhat disturbing way that the rest of the scene plays out, excerpted from the 1926 novel by Edna Ferber that the musical was based on:
He loosened Julie’s hold almost roughly. From his pocket he whipped a great clasp-knife and opened its flashing blade. Julie did not scream, but the other women did, shriek on shriek. …
…The boots of Ike Keener, the sheriff, clattered down the aisle of the Cotton Blossom.
"Stop those women screeching,” Steve shouted. Then, to Julie, “It won’t hurt much, darling.” With incredible swiftness he seized Julie’s hand in his left one and ran the keen glittering blade of his knife firmly across the tip of her forefinger. A scarlet line followed it. He bent his blond head, pressed his lips to the wound, sucked it greedily. With a little moan Julie fell back on the bed. Steve snapped the blade into its socket, thrust the knife into his pocket. The boots of Sheriff Ike Keener were clattering across the stage now.
… Ike Keener confronted the little cowed group on the stage. A star shone on his left breast. The scene was like a rehearsal of a Cotton Blossom thriller. “Who’s captain of this here boat?”
Andy … stepped forward. “I am. What’s wanted with him?" …
“Well, Cap, kind of unpleasant, but I understand there’s a miscegenation case on board.”
Sheriff Ike Keener produced a piece of paper. “Name of the white man is Steve Baker. Name… of the negress is Julie Dozier.” He looked around at the group. “Which one’s them?”
Steve Baker grinned— …He looked Ike Keener in the eye. “You wouldn’t call a man a white man that’s got Negro blood in him, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t; not in Mississippi. One drop of… blood [is enough] in these parts.”
“Well, I got more than a drop…" [2]
This may seem like just a silly word game, conflating two different ways we use the word "blood"—a grim version of the old joke: "well, do you want a little [ethnicity] in you?"
And it is also a well-deserved mockery of the idiotic race laws of those times. (In spite of such draconian attempts to police it, recent widespread genetic testing has shown that in many Southern states well over 10% of those who identify as "white" have significantly more than "a drop" of African descent.) [3] But Steve doesn't think that his new blood-siblinghood with his wife will magically make him "Black." Just that a roomful of witnesses can now truthfully swear that they know for a fact he has some "Negro blood" in him—especially Windy, with his Honest Abe reputation—and that that may be enough for the sheriff to drop the issue, rather than hauling them in where more concrete proofs of their parentage might have caught up with them.
(But NOT enough to save their jobs: unlike the cast of Show Boat itself, the Cotton Blossom troupe are not racially integrated, so this revelation means that the two players are unceremoniously pushed out of their roles and onto the streets.)
Typical of the times, the remainder of the narrative is not kind to the characters of Steve and Julie. They barely feature in the rest of the novel or show, and when Julie does reappear, Steve has evidently abandoned her, a baffling example of a needless plot point that completely undermines the power of an earlier scene. But… that singular moment stands for itself: bizarre, melodramatic, grotesque… utterly soaked in the racial guilt of its time, but at the same time? …achingly romantic.
So, let's bring this back around to Hangman X Swerve. Do I mean to suggest that Hangman's blood-slurping has made him somehow "officially Black"? Renouncing his whiteness like Steve had? No: a thematic element even hinting in that direction would obviously be in fantastically bad taste, even by pro-wrestling standards. Almost certainly, any seeming parallel is entirely coincidental.
If Swerve sees the part of him that he says Hangman will carry with him for the rest of his life as more of a curse than a weapon, or elixir… he probably does NOT mean the curse of being subject to racial prejudice. More likely he's referring to the mental illness that he had claimed led him to "make an enemy out of somebody every single day" of his life, during the memorable contract signing before the two men's first match.
However, there are two aspects where this particular blood symbolism is very relevant to our analysis of Swerve X Hangman. One is the simple fact that this is one strange sort of blood siblinghood where the rules in place establish decidedly that "one drop" is enough. At the very least, in the jurisdiction of the state of Mississippi during the timeframe of the scene in Show Boat. (Such laws outlawing marriages based on such racial definitions were thrown out as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Loving vs Virginia case of 1967, but technically remained on the books until the opening of the 21st Century.) [4]
The other aspect is: I have been glossing over the racial subtext of this story—the story of a deep hatred between a white man and a black man—because I was so focused on blood metaphors. What I've been failing to take into account is the fact that the concept of "race" is itself a blood metaphor!
The one moment so far when the racial implications of it all are stated almost explicitly was that same chaotic contract-signing I referenced earlier in this section. In Act I of this series, I quoted Hangman's part of this exchange extensively—where he is speaking of the evil little raincloud sent by God to rain exclusively on him. But a little bit later, he says a few words about opportunities:
Swerve, Swerve, you tell me… You tell me that you want this spot. You tell me you want this position, you want to be a main-event guy in AEW. That's what you're telling me. You told me that if you'd had the opportunities that I did, that you would've been, long ago, the first Black AEW World Champion. ... ... ... And Swerve… Swerve, I don't know, maybe you would. I don't know, it's a hypothetical. ... ... ... The only thing you or I could do would be to live our lives in a way that the generations that come after us don't have to ask that question of themselves. ... ... ... And we could sit here and go back and forth ALL day long about whether those opportunities were handed to me on a silver platter, or whether I earned them. ... ... ... But the thing that everyone can agree upon, is that for every opportunity that I have EVER had… I knocked it! Out! Of the Park!
—Adam Page
It's very easy for us, as AEW fans, to listen to Hangman's words and feel swayed. After all, we've watched him grow before our eyes, we've seen his struggle and we've seen the obstacles he's had to overcome. Which makes it easy to ignore that he's making the exact same case using many of the exact same words as someone trying to deny the advantages of nepotism or of white privilege. Also that— while we may say that Adam Page the performer has knocked all of his opportunities out of the park as a storyteller— can the same truly be said of the character of "Hangman" as a competitor in that story? Or would it be more accurate to say that, in the larger AEW story, Hangman Adam Page blew one opportunity after another until finally succeeding and becoming the World Champion? As if he had been the chosen one from the start?
The Road not Taken
A few weeks later, at the Dynamite show in Newark, NJ on January 3rd, the simmering issue between Page and Strickland finally returns to the front burner for the first time since their war in Los Angeles. Swerve had been eliminated from the Continental Classic in a three-way tie-breaker to determine who would make the final. It's worth noting that despite not winning overall, Swerve was the only participant in the grueling round-robin with a loss to only one of the other competitors… even including the ultimate winner. Not only has his winning record been impeccable, he also hadn't been taking the kinds of shortcuts Page had criticized him for in the past. Swerve had almost always been the villain of the story before this, but more and more the fans had begun to root for him and to chant his "Swerve's House" chant. If that were not the preferred course of those crafting the AEW stories, and if they had decided to fight that tide and try to return him to hated-heel status, the obvious tropes would have been to have him show cowardice and unscrupulousness by avoiding tough fights or by using his "Mogul Embassy" henchmen to help him win. His run at the Continental Classic did the exact opposite, by throwing him at the toughest competition around and not allowing any seconds at ringside, suggesting that Swerve being cheered more and more might've been something they were looking to encourage, not discourage! So it came as no surprise when Swerve used his interview time to praise the young up-and-comer Daniel Garcia who he was matched up with in the main event that night as someone whose determination and ambition he respected… and to announce that his sights are now set on the World Heavyweight Championship, to the excited acclamation of the throng.
Meanwhile, Hangman had been taken out by unidentified but unrelated attackers a few weeks prior, evidently as a red herring in a fumbled whodunit story. Once the underwhelming reveal occured, the blame for it finally fell on the new World Champion Samoa Joe, and on Page's old rival Adam Cole. Generally speaking, an unrelated attack is a way to divert a character away from some burning issue that had had the character obsessed, but had reached the end of its road, and onto some fresher plotline. And at first, that appears to be the storytelling intent here as well. When the returning Page rolls his suitcase through interviewer Renee Paquette's shot and impulsively takes over the interview time (again,) he says he's there tonight "to beat somebody's ass," but—while his first choices of ass are those of the World Champion or of Adam Cole in reaction to the recent attack—he makes a point of letting us know that he's willing to take it out on anybody who crosses him, and dares anyone to give him a reason.
Other than some minor shenanigans early on, the big main event between Strickland and Garcia is primarily a hard-fought scientific contest. Danny shows his tenacity and resourcefulness but in the end Swerve overwhelms him to notch a hard-fought victory to a resounding ovation. So Garcia doesn't question it when Swerve offers him a handshake of mutual respect. But old habits die hard, and the offer was merely a distraction for Nana to hit him with the low blow from behind.
Everything seemed to be lining up for a different future: one where Hangman maybe goes for revenge against Joe or perhaps against the injured and wheelchair-bound Adam Cole's faction of sycophants, while Swerve maybe gets distracted from his focus on gold by a revenge-minded Daniel Garcia or perhaps some valiant defender, and tries to convince the fans to react to him as the villain again. But instead, Nana gets on the microphone and reiterates that the "Boss of Bosses" has his sights firmly set on Samoa Joe's World Championship. For Hangman Adam Page—who still feels that Swerve isn't fit to hold the title that (to his mind) represents moral leadership of AEW—this constitutes "giving him a reason" and his music hits and he stomps out to the ring to face off with Swerve, quickly escalating to exchanging punches. Much like another sensitive cowboy from fiction, even when another path seems to beckon, Hangman just can't quit Swerve.
The Struggle to be # 1 Contender
The following week, at the Jacksonville "Homecoming" event, the new World Champion Samoa Joe comes out to the ring to make an announcement about a return to tradition regarding the process for choosing challengers for his title...
...No more will boastful words or "sob stories" lead to title matches, instead challengers will be selected on the strength of their record alone.
These words draw out Swerve Strickland to tell Joe to his face that just like he had told Adam Page he would take his spot, and that there was nothing personal, and then he took it, he was going to do the same with Joe and the World title. But speak of the devil and he shall appear—Hangman then makes his entrance as well. Surprisingly, he pointedly ignores Strickland, addressing only the World Champ, talking about how he had lost sight of the World title the previous year, and that was going to change, and that he hadn't forgotten what Joe had done to him, (the beatdown from the anonymous goons,) and he would be paying him back by taking his title.
[Check out what Saul had to say about this segment at the time in #AEWeekly #101]
The next few weeks are a struggle via proxy to become # 1 contender and cut the other out, while trying to avoid having to decide it in the ring one-on-one. Swerve claims that this is because he has already beaten Page twice and has nothing to prove.
[Check out what I had to say about this interview at the time in #AEWeekly #102]
While Hangman tries to front that it's not about Swerve anymore, but between himself and Joe. At the following week's Dynamite in Charleston, Page tries to pass off the most barefaced falsehood I've ever heard, saying:
Swerve seems to think about me a lot. I don’t think about him at all. If he says he can beat me, I would say it doesn't matter. Because he’s not the World Champion. Samoa Joe is.
—Adam Page
Page would repeatedly claim that his involvement is about wanting to hold the World Championship again, himself—but not once does it ring true. When he says that "not …another soul on the planet…cared more about the AEW World Championship," and that he "treated it with reverence," there is no doubt that that part is true, but his way of honoring that reverence seems more about keeping the one man he deems uniquely unworthy away from the championship he so reveres, than about gaining it for himself. And that distinction would play out throughout this chapter of the two men's story.
Two weeks later on January 31st, Dynamite is emanating from an arena in New Orleans. Both men remain undefeated in 2024, so the issue of who is the worthiest contender for the World title remains unsettled. Both men have a vested interest in the other losing, but neither feels they should need to prove anything going against the other again directly, so they each get an opportunity to upset the other indirectly with "Dealer's Choice" matches—where they each get to pick the match for the other.
About the midpoint of the show, Hangman Page gets his Dealer's Choice from Swerve. This time "the Boss of Bosses" does not send Brian Cage, who we know has history with the Hangman, but instead a different brawny henchman from his faction: Toa Liona. Perhaps Swerve's rationale is to test Page against a wrestler with a lot in common with the Champion both men are trying to reach: both Joe and Toa are burly, wide-based grapplers of Samoan heritage. But "Dealer's Choice" still ends with a Hangman victory when he rolls through Toa's Samoan drop into a cradle pin.
In the main event of the night, Page chooses as Swerve's opponent the veteran legend of hardcore wrestling, Rob Van Dam. Neither Strickland nor Page have any particular history with RVD, so Hangman's rationale for handpicking him as Swerve's opponent seems mysterious. Until both men are in the ring and Hangman appears on the big screen to explain: "Dealer's Choice" means that he has the power to choose Swerve's match, which doesn't JUST mean his opponent—but also the ruleset.
So Swerve isn't going to just be facing Rob in a regular match, but instead a hardcore match with no disqualifications—the type of match that Van Dam has decades of experience specializing in.
(Now, Hangman has always been unusually shrewd compared to the typical fan-favorite. The good guys in wrestling generally favor trusting to a fault and choosing to emphasize courage and tenacity over strategy or cunning. But Page has gone against that grain—never falling for the same trick twice, and sometimes turning the tables on some bamboozle attempt. But this was something different: there was nothing inherently unethical about this trick. But it wasn't turnabout on an attempt to trick him, either. Even if this scam on Swerve wasn't specifically villainous, it was the sort of tactic more associated with a villain like Swerve…. and a harbinger of changes to Page's presentation to come, supporting my "Freaky Friday" theory of the two men's blood brotherhood.)
Despite dealing with a far more brutal match than he had been prepared for—with steel chairs flying, against an opponent expert in their use—Swerve comes out on top, leaving the two nemeses still deadlocked for number-one contender to the World Champion. After the match, Hangman comes out to the ring to reiterate that he will never let Swerve become World Champion. After some back and forth, Swerve is pushed too far and—despite feeling he shouldn't need to prove anything after having already beaten Page twice—challenges the Hangman to one more match to determine who Samoa Joe's challenger should be. As the show goes off the air, an announcement is made that that #-1-contender match is official, and will happen on the next Dynamite.
[Check out what Saul and I had to say about the Dealer's Choice story at the time in #AEWeekly #104]
But before this huge rematch happens, Swerve makes a rare appearance on the less-watched Saturday night show, emanating from a small Texas border city called Edinburg, and makes an important and revealing speech:
First, Strickland speaks more directly than ever before about the social/political relevance of his quest to become the first Black AEW Champion. He talks about the importance of representing the great black champions who paved the way, and also of continuing to pave the way for the talented Black competitors of today and of the future.
He also says that, while he wants to have Prince Nana by his side, and is proud to have his support, he is directing him NOT to interfere in the #-1-contender match in any way, so that Hangman won't have ANY excuses this time! Between the two topics, this is by far the most "babyface" promo Swerve has ever cut, and a preview of further changes to his presentation yet to come. Not to mention being further support for my (admittedly nutty) theory that when Hangman took Swerve's blood into himself it caused some strange reversal of the two men's souls.
Swerve X Hangman III
The atmosphere in the arena in Phoenix on the night of February 7th is crackling with tension. Tonight is the third singles match between Swerve Strickland and Adam Page, and the only such match that has ever (or has yet to have ever) happened on free television. Despite being such a massive matchup, this contest is opening the show, (a tell that it will very likely run quite long.) The two men start out with a face-off, trash-talking at each other forehead to forehead. Then they pull apart and stare each other down, soaking in that electricity, while Nana leads the audience in a raucous "Swerve's House" chant. Page side-eyes the crowd that they are still supporting Strickland in spite of all of his unconscionable crimes. Finally they lock up and struggle in a tie-ups, with first Swerve and then Hangman each pushing their opponent into the ropes, and then giving him the clean break. On the third tie-up, it's Swerve again forcing Hangman into the ropes, and the shit-eating grin as he backs away makes it clear that the clean breaks have been mind games from the start. He succeeds in angering Page with his snark, and he closes with him for another session of forehead-touching jawing.
FFS, guys. Just kiss already!
Hangman throws a big punch, and Swerve responds with a double-leg, taking Hanger to the mat and returning grounded fists as they roll for dominant position and exchange blows, ending up rolling out to the floor.
After both men fight back and forth in the ring area, Swerve returns Hanger to the ring. But by the time Swerve rolls back in, Hangman is ready for him, taking control and whipping him into the corner, then he punches him down off his feet and starts stomping him in the chest. They go back and forth, each punching and stomping the other in different corners until Hangman reverses a whip attempt into the fallaway slam and kips up. But when he walks over to a pull Swerve back to his feet, Strickland gets him in the jaw with a sudden rising headbutt.
But when Swerve climbs to the second buckle, Hanger interrupts whatever he had intended, pulling him hard back to the mat by an ankle, then mounts him and lays in some heavy punches to his face. Hangman returns to his feet and when he reaches for Swerve to pull him back to his feet, this time Swerve blocks whatever he intended by literally biting the hand. Swerve awkwardly maneuvers Hangman into an arm stretching hold, but when he tries to transition into the arm-snapper move, Hangman arm-drags him off himself. Swerve charges at Hangman whose back is to the ropes. Hangman flips him over himself onto the ring apron, then goes for his signature leaping-off-the-buckle lariat, which Swerve anticipates and ducks. But Hangman expected that, and immediately reverses trajectory and hits Swerve in the back of the neck with a lariat from the opposite direction. The story so far is of two wrestlers who can only have any success by thinking several moves ahead, because their opponent knows their moves and tactics so well that they always have a counter ready, and a counter for the counter.
Hangman then rushes Swerve along the apron headfirst into the top buckle and Swerve crashes to the floor outside. Page beats Strickland up around the ringside area again, whipping him into barricades and doing another fallaway slam, this time on the hard concrete floor. Hangman turns his back on his fallen opponent and steps back into the ring, perhaps hoping to try for the count out. But Swerve isn't that far gone, and follows him back inside right away. The two men end up in a corner alternating which one is on attack and chopping one another's chests. But then Hangman puts a knee in Swerve's gut, and he drops to a hands-and-knees position. When Page sees his enemy's vulnerability, he hits him with a vicious low dropkick to the side of the face. This leads Hangman to go for the very first cover attempt of the match, over ten minutes in. However, Swerve is very close to the ring's edge, so he is able to easily grab the bottom rope for the break. They exchange a few punches, then Hangman attempts a roll-up pin and Swerve kicks out. This puts Page in position on the ring apron to attempt the Buckshot, but when Swerve sees his plan, he charges at him—more to get out of position for that match-ender than with any specific attack in mind, so Hangman easily redirects his momentum up and over back to the floor once again.
Hangman goes to hit the turnbuckle Moonsault, but Swerve ducks out of the path. Page lands on his feet, but this sets him up for Strickland to hit him with a flatliner, crashing him face-first into the hard floor. As Page attempts to return to his feet, Swerve hits him with one flying strike to the outside, then returns him to the ring for another, followed up by several slams and suplexes. Then he sees Page in position (seated on the mat,) and hits him with his signature "House Call" flying kick to the head. Swerve goes for the pin, but Hangman kicks out before 3.
The two men continue going back and forth like this, mostly countering and re-countering, sometimes hitting something big, but the other man kicks out. Then at 17 minutes into the match, Swerve has the advantage but Hangman just kicked out of his own Buckshot and a Swerve Stomp, so Strickland tries to rerun a risky stunt that paid off big for him in the Texas Death. He balances on the barricade with Hangman's head between his legs, intending to smash his skull into the steel edge of the barricade with a piledriver. But this time, Page succeeds in countering, turning the set-up instead into a DDT smashing Swerve's skull into the top edge of the barricade instead.
Hangman and Swerve are both laid out by this risky maneuver, but Hangman recovers quite a bit sooner, using that time to set up a folding table next to the ring. Hangman returns them into the ring and clearly intends to toss Swerve back out through the table in some manner, but Strickland gets back in control, delaying the use of Chekhov's folding table. 20 minutes of the match have now elapsed. The two competitors start throwing bombs at each other: haymakers and big boots to the face. Hangman gets a string of big punches to Swerve's face, but Swerve taps into that "indifference to pain" we remember from Texas Death, smiling, laughing, and egging Page on, then taking control with more strikes of his own.
When Page goes to the second buckle, Swerve shuts him down by shoving him over. Then the Hangman gets caught upside down with his legs tangled in the top buckle, and Swerve hits his Stomp to Hanger's chest as he dangles there. Hangman then stumbles onto the table he had set up earlier— Swerve clearly has some violent plan in mind for him there, but the fickle table prematurely collapses under Page!
Swerve then gets tunnel vision and scrambles for a new table from under the ring and sets it up, but then seems to change his mind—likely concerned that Page had too much time to recover, so a splash through Page and table would be too risky. Instead he rolls him back into the ring, setting him up for a splash from the top rope, his back to the mat rather than a table. Swerve hits the 450° splash, but Hangman has indeed had too much recovery time, so he gets his knees up. Swerve crashes hard ribcage-first into Hangman's knees and Page rolls him through into a cover.
Swerve barely kicks out, and Prince Nana is finally getting really worried. Up until this point, he had been acting simply as a cheerleader, egging on the crowd to chant about whose house this is, and honoring Swerve's wishes that he not get involved in the action, but this one was too close for the Prince's comfort, and he finally removes his gold crown and reaches it toward Swerve, yelling "boss! Boss!" But Swerve is still out of it, and instead he gets Page's attention! The Hangman points angrily at the Prince—yelling "get the hell out of here!" —and he sheepishly backs off.
At the same time this is going on, the ring announcer intones that there are "five minutes remaining." It's important to remember that this match has a 30-minute time limit, like most matches (other than World title matches, which usually get a full hour.) So if 30-minutes elapses, the match will end in a draw.
Swerve then tries to create some space to recover by dumping Page to the floor, but Hangman catches the top rope and Skins the Cat* back inside, immediately hitting Swerve with a clothesline arm strike almost like his Buckshot except with momentum being added by a backflip over the top rope instead of a front flip. He follows this up with a regular Buckshot Lariat from the opposite direction! It is VERY clear there is no way Swerve can kick out this time. However they are very close to the ropes, so he only has to straighten his leg out to get the rope break. Hangman starts pointing accusingly and shouting at Nana again—he (understandably) seems to suspect that Swerve's stooge had put his foot on the rope to save his man, but that was not the case—not this time!
Then both men are on the apron and Hangman hits his opponent with his signature Deadeye inverted piledriver on the proverbial "hardest part of the mat." Swerve rolls to the outside while Page rolls into the ring and gestures for the referee to start his count. Swerve has till the referee's count of ten to return to the ring or lose, and after all the punishment he's absorbed in the past couple minutes, it's not looking good for him.
Whether it's to honor Swerve's wish or worry about Hangman attacking, Nana decides NOT to help him up as he's done in similar situations in the past. But if he can only cheerlead, he can at least cheerlead HARD… so the Prince starts doing his silly dance to try to revive and inspire Swerve. As Swerve slowly drags himself to the ring with his strange hype man urging him forward. Hangman looks on, incensed. Bizarrely, the encouragement seems to do the job, as Swerve rolls back into the ring at 9.999.
A livid Hangman immediately low-dropkicks him back out to the floor. He follows him out and grabs a steel folding chair, menacing him with it while shouting to "stay down!" He rears back with the chair as if he were about to swing it into Swerve's back, but it was a fake-out. If he were to hit Swerve with a weapon in full view of the referee, he would immediately lose the match by disqualification, but no such rule applies to Nana! Page changes trajectory in midswing and instead smashes the flat of the chair directly along the Prince's spine. He stalks toward the fallen consigliere, shouting "you keep your ass out of this!"
Then he raises the chair as he turns back towards Swerve, but his eye had been off the ball too long—Swerve catches him with a kick to the face just as he turns back toward him, and the steel chair was between them and so gets kicked into Hanger's face. Because he wasn't actually wielding the chair, it doesn't prompt disqualification, but Swerve still gets the benefit of a steel impact.
Swerve rolls Hangman back in and hits that Swerve Stomp from the top buckle, but he twists his ankle on landing. He sets up the Big Pressure driver, but with the weakened ankle, Hangman is able to reverse and give the ankle a further vicious twist.
Now that he is back in control, Hangman eyes Chekhov's table on the outside. He pulls Swerve to the apron and starts to set something up, but Swerve reverses and takes control, and gets Hangman up to hit his own signature Deadeye on him, from the edge of the ring, through the table to the floor.
He tosses him back in and climbs to the top buckle to go for another Stomp, but Hangman moves out of the way, and Swerve collapses due to the impact on the weakened ankle. Hangman goes for the Buckshot again, but Swerve ducks it and this time successfully hits the Big Pressure. He is slow to go for a cover because of the pain in his ankle. Would that make the difference and allow Hangman to kick out before three? We'll never know (though it definitely didn't look good!) because before the ref can bring his hand down for three, the bell rings to indicate the match is over. Why? Because the 30 minutes had expired, and the match is now a time-limit draw!
The look of horror on Swerve's face at this news is amazing. It makes complete sense that for two competitors focused on earning the # 1 contendership the news of a draw would be horrifying. Swerve gestures for a mic and says to Hangman: "you know how this goes: five more minutes," and slides the mic across the ring to his adversary. Hangman is finally starting to come to, and he does NOT look horrified… instead, he's laughing with a big grin on his face. He gets on the mic and joyfully says that Swerve had to beat him to be # 1 contender and he failed.
"Lolno"
This finally sets to rest any doubts: Hangman clearly cares more about ensuring Swerve does NOT become Champion than about earning the title himself. In retrospect, the entire match he had been wrestling to not lose more than wrestling to win…
But then, commentator Tony Schiavone gets on the mic to make an important announcement: Hangman made too many assumptions. The promoter had made the call that the #-1-contender match ending in a draw did NOT mean that neither man was # 1 contender, but instead that BOTH would be!
"That is NOT what was supposed to happen!"
Which raises a pressing question: what is a triple-threat match going to look like when one competitor only really cares about acting as a spoiler? Can Swerve have any chance in such an impossible situation?
[Check out what Saul, Peter & Gareth had to say about events surrounding Swerve X Hangman III at the time in #AEWeekly #105]
Fake Out
So, the match had been announced, but the next event big enough to contain such a massive confrontation, AEW Revolution, was still almost a month away.
[Check out what Saul had to say about a war of words between the three a week later in #AEWeekly #106]
In situations like that, promotions will often do something rather silly to kill time, while keeping the competitors front-of-mind. In this case, on a Wednesday night a week and a half before the big match, all three men were put into a three-on-three match: Joe and Swerve on one team, Hangman on the other. The exact details of this aren't relevant to our story, except for one: near the end of the match, Joe had Hangman balanced upside-down on his shoulders—the set-up position for his "Muscle Buster" finisher. Page flipped out of this hold and landed on his feet—but awkwardly. A limping Hangman tagged out of the match and didn't tag back in, or even return to the apron as if he were ready to tag in. After Samoa Joe got the win by making one of Page's teammates tap out in his signature submission choke, Page was seen sitting on the floor ringside, still clutching his ankle.
This is the kind of little detail that sparks debates among wrestling fans: is the performer actually hurt? Or is the injury in-character? OR… at a higher meta-level of deception, is the character pretending to be hurt? The following Wednesday on the Dynamite show coming out of Huntsville, Alabama, just 4 days before the big show, we would learn the answer. To open the show, we are told that Adam Page has an important announcement, and then he comes limping out to the ring leaning on a crutch, with a choked-up "bad news" look on his face.
"If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."
Adam Page's exact words here end up being quite significant:
So, I’m not gonna apologize to Swerve… I'm not gonna apologize to Samoa Joe, but I will tell you, because I need to tell you the truth— I’m always honest with you— that this Sunday at Revolution I will not be able to compete.
Then Swerve comes out and joins Hangman in the ring, and says a few words about how this isn't how he wanted it to happen, but becoming World Champion is his destiny.
Then Joe comes out and talks to both men from the top of the ramp, and says a few mocking, derisive words about how the two blood enemies are practically hugging it out… and how they had always had it wrong: thinking that the path to the championship was through each other, when all along he was always the real threat.
This gets Swerve hot under the collar and he turns and focuses completely on the World Champion, saying a few words about how far he's come and how quickly, and the lengths he's willing to go to become World Champion. When suddenly, a crutch swung from behind him crashes flat against his back, knocking him off his feet.
"You know that thing I just said? About always being honest? HAHAHAHAHA! I LIED!"
Adam Page is now doing a boxer bounce—easily putting his weight on both his legs equally—setting up for a follow-up blow. This time, Hangman jabs Swerve in the jaw with the head of the crutch, knocking him for a loop. He crouches next to his nemesis' limp form and shouts in his ear "YOU WILL NEVER HAVE IT!!" At this point, it couldn't be clearer what Page's top priority is.
[Check out what Saul had to say about this segment at the time in #AEWeekly #108]
When I assert that the Hangman was slowly transforming into the villain of the story during this chapter—from the Texas Death Match to the Triple Threat match—many fans will claim that Swerve breaking into Hangman's home and threatening his child justify anything and everything, and up to a point they're right. If someone did that to you, how far might you go to get your revenge or to ensure your family's safety? Sure, all of that may be said to justify any depth of brutality Page may have stooped to... But base trickery? If a character in a story pretends to be injured to attack from behind unaware, that character is a villain or scoundrel, full stop.
Triple Threat
On a Sunday night, February 3rd 2024, AEW holds their big Revolution event out of Greensboro Coliseum. The capacity crowd are here, mostly, to see the final match of a man who had made decades of legendary moments right in this storied arena: the icon Sting. But first, the World Champion Samoa Joe has to defend his title against two blood enemies at the same time. Commentators often claim that the odds are stacked against the champion in a match like this, and yet they so rarely lose them. And in this particular three-way, the odds are indeed stacked against one of the competitors… and we will soon see which one.
As the bell rings, the Champion starts out dominant with the "nope" spot on Swerve, (a signature of Joe's where he simply walks to the side to avoid a diving attack,) then a great head-and-body fake where he seems to be running the ropes with Hangman but then surprise-switches his attention to Swerve on the outside and hits him with the elbow suicida dive. And when Hangman tries to follow him out, Joe cuts him off with a kick in mid-leap. But when his two challengers combine to dump Joe to the outside, his head bounces off the floor, writing him out of the story for some time, so that the heated rivals can fight one-on-one for a bit. Hangman gets the first cover of the night after hitting a belly-to-belly suplex, and that's when Joe finally struggles back to the ring just in time to break it up. In a neat bit of storytelling, Joe is standing in the corner on the second rope and each man in succession attempts to powerbomb him, but get fought off. Only THEN do they work together to succeed in the double-powerbomb. But rather than any temporary alliance, this leads to a hate-fueled staredown and a vicious strike exchange between the two nemeses. This sets up a pattern that repeats throughout: one or the other or both challengers pushing the champion to the side so that they can focus on the man they hate rather than the man they are trying to take the World title from.
"Am I the World Champ here? Or a referee?"
After hitting a series of moves on Joe while Page is staggered on the mat, climaxing with his house call kick, Swerve turns to the Hangman rather than going for a cover on Joe. He hits the house call on Hanger as well, and in one of the few covers where Joe is not able to get in position for a breakup, Page kicks out in a dramatic two-count... After which a dazed Hangman rolls out, leading to an exchange between Joe and Swerve again. The champ seems to be getting the better of Strickland at first, but when Swerve takes over with a devastating sequence—a pendulum DDT in the corner, a 450° splash, then the Swerve Stomp—Hangman isn’t in position to break up the cover, so he stops the three count by interfering with the official, pulling referee Paul Turner out of position by the foot, and then going so far as to pull him all the way out of the ring, slamming his back to the floor outside. Page doesn’t hesitate a millisecond to take this extreme of a step nor to immediately follow up by taking a shot at Swerve with the Championship belt, the same tactic he vacillated over like he was Hamlet when he was defending the title against CM Punk all those months ago.
Page knocks Swerve out of the ring ranting that he will never have the very belt Hangman is beating him up with. By this time, Joe has just finally staggered to his feet, setting him up perfectly for Hangman to hit two Buckshot lariats in a row. At this point, Page is hung by his own petard. The lack of a referee, that he caused himself, leads to a long cover with no count, until finally replacement ref Bryce Remsburg rolls in to take over officiating for Joe to get the delayed kick-out at two. Joe reverses Hangman’s attempt at a third Buckshot into his feared rear naked choke, which Swerve then breaks up with a Sky-Twister Press. Then, nefarious Nana hands his client the crown that had been key to Swerve’s first victory over Hangman that had started all of this. Swerve hesitates … and finally rejects the foreign object … JUST the way Hangman had once done… which leaves him vulnerable and distracted for Joe to grab him in the choke from behind. But Strickland drops down to reverse the hold into a roll-up cover.
But then, the immediate possibility of Swerve earning the championship here makes Page FULLY snap, not only pulling Remsburg out of position for the count, but then wailing on the back of the referee's head with strikes, and then tossing yet another AEW official to the outside.
With no ref present to count a decision, Swerve is at this point fighting more for his life than for a title, and holding his own against both men. But when he tries to dump Hanger out of the ring in order to focus on Joe, Page skins the cat into his finish and hits the Buckshot again. But then Joe gets involved again in a fast-paced three-man segment that sees each man hitting multiple finishes, including Swerve hitting an amazing version of his enemy’s Buckshot from the top turnbuckle. But when he tries to follow up, Joe grabs him up from behind and hits the exploder, leaving the weakened Page for him. While Swerve is struggling to get back into the mix, the very moment Page sees that the original ref is back in position to call a decision… he taps out. Losing, yes, but more importantly: ensuring that Swerve cannot win.
[I had many things to say about this match at the time, but I knew that I'd need a LOT more space to explain fully, which is what eventually led to this series. Check out the two reactions to this match and the storytelling around it that I put out at the time in Reflections on AEW Revolution '24 & #AEWeekly #109]
Hangman's craven choices of playing injured to set up a sneak attack using a crutch as a weapon, after disingenuously claiming to his fans that he's always honest with them, then later beating up TWO innocent referees, using the title belt as a weapon without hesitation (unlike in more innocent days) and, finally, surrendering for tactical advantage despite not actually being beaten… all make for an amazing contrast with the changes in his nemesis. Specifically, Swerve in the end deciding NOT to use a short-cut to become World Champion, ultimately choosing the self-respect of winning or losing based on his ability… only to have that stolen out from under him by Page's duplicitous tap.
Footnote:
* What IS "Skinning the Cat" and why on EARTH is it called that? In wrestling, it's called Skinning the Cat when the competitor starts out hanging by both hands from the top rope facing away from the ring, (usually because an opponent tried to toss them out but they caught the rope instead of falling all the way to the floor.) Then, as a fancy and impressive way of returning to the ring, they use their arm and core strength to flip backwards, heels over head, over the top rope landing feet-first back on the mat.
I had always assumed that this was a reference to there being "more than one way to skin a cat," meaning there are more ways to do something than the most obvious one. Since the most obvious way to get into the ring is to clamber in face forward, backflipping in is "skinning the cat."
However, with a little research, it turns out that wrestling borrowed this term from gymnastics, where flipping backwards while hanging is one of the most basic moves one learns on the rings. And there's actually only one way to flip that's considered "skinning the cat" in gymnastics, so: what gives?
However, with a little more digging I found that gymnastics took the term from American schoolboy slang likely going back over two centuries. It was originally a term children would apply to such kid activities as tree climbing. Why they would call it that remains a matter for speculation, beyond the obvious fact that schoolboys are often extraordinarily cruel and disgusting. [5] But my original guess fits as well as any: maybe kids called it that because backflipping up onto a branch or a fence or a jungle gym isn't the first way you'd think to do it, thus: "more than one way to skin a cat!"
References:
rodgersandhammerstein.com, "The Enduring Relevance of Show Boat" by Masi Asare and Todd Decker
Show Boat by Edna Farber
Vox, "Here’s where 'white' Americans have the highest percentage of African ancestry" by Jenée Desmond-Harris
Salon, "Mixing it up" by Suzy Hansen
Mint Lounge, "Why you need to learn how to skin the cat" by Pulasta Dhar
Thank you for reading, I hope you got as much out of this as I did from writing it! It seems clear now that the next section of Blood Feud will likely be the last, and will cover through this past Saturday's All Out event. However, I need a break before I embark on another writing binge like this! And also a few weeks to see if anything happens that may count as relevant denouement...
But whenever the 4th and evidently climactic Act arrives, I hope you will alll return and join me again then for (MUCH) more blood and madness!