How Hangman Page Will Change Everything About Pro Wrestling
Wrestlers don't just dip in confidence in storylines. They are confident alpha males who are meant to appeal in an aspirational sense. Headline wrestlers don't just join comedic undercard cults to feel like they belong some place. They stay in the mix, "protected" via some traditional mechanism or other, so as to not lose their value as ticket-selling performers. They don't sink to their lowest ebb. They don't feel "head to toe like poison"; they issue badass threats.
Page isn't cynically gunning for the top spot in any Wrestler of the Year lists, if the beginning of 2021 is any indication. He doesn't think in years, nor indeed in the vein of any traditional accolades. He is, using the expressive AEW platform, curating a career rich in continuity as inspired by Kenny Omega.
David Lynch upon making Twin Peaks talked up the potential of television when it was thought by some critics that he'd lowered himself to the medium. He luxuriated in the idea of the "continuing story," feeling that film was limited in that regard. The sheer expanse of television, in Lynch's mind, allowed for an immense deepening of investment and possibility. It appears, whether with knowledge of the quote or not, that Page has applied it to his work. It all feels like one long continuing story not marked by the old hoary machinations of heel turns and sharp narrative pivots designed to get his "heat back". Hangman Page is elevating the soap opera of professional wrestling into prestige drama.
There's a brand new sense of heft and reality to Hangman's arc that is as powerful as it is ambitious.
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