"It was the absolute worst" - AEW Champion Hangman Page reveals why wrestling during the pandemic 'sucked'
AEW World Champion Hangman Page was recently a guest on Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette. During the interview, The Anxious Millennial Cowboy opened up about what it was like wrestling without fans during the pandemic.
He also discussed the first Stadium Stampede match and why it was a perfect fit for the pandemic era.
Speaking about wrestling during the COVID-19 pandemic, Page made his feelings clear and said that he was not a fan of wrestling without fans in attendance:
"Wrestling during the pandemic sucked. It was the absolute worst. You would just be going hard for 15 minutes and no one gave a sh*t because there’s no one there to give a sh*t. So then you’re starting to think like, ‘Oh my God, I just did a superplex’ or whatever and no one gives a sh*t because there’s no one there. It’s just silence so you think, ‘I gotta hurry up and do something else’ because that’s how we’re conditioned as wrestlers. We respond and interact with the crowd that’s there and you take that away, I don’t know what wrestling is. It sucked," said Hangman Page.
Does @bryandanielson or @theAdamPage leave #WinterIsComing as AEW World Champion https://t.co/o3bah2Eu70
Hangman Page on the first AEW Stadium Stampede match
.@AEWrestling Stadium Stampede at the Bank 🔥 https://t.co/DkN0FzT7GK
The first Stadium Stampede match pitted The Elite, Matt Hardy, and Hangman Page against The Inner Circle members at AEW Double or Nothing 2020.
It featured a memorable entrance by Page on a horse, and the finish of the bout saw Kenny Omega hitting an insane One-Winged Angel to Sammy Guevara for the win.
Speaking about the match, Hangman Page felt that it may not have worked that well in front of fans, but it was perfect during the pandemic to keep fans at home entertained:
"Getting to do something like, was it Stadium Stampede or whatever? It was really fun, the opportunity to do something that, you know like when we did the first Stampede, would absolutely never work. If you told a live crowd that, ‘Hey, we’re gonna cut away from you guys and there’s gonna be a fight somewhere else.’ That, ‘We’re gonna show a movie on the screen,’ it would never work without the pandemic. But it was the perfect time for something like that and it was great and it’s not something that we’re all completely unfamiliar with," said Hangman Page. H/T: POST Wrestling
The Anxious Millennial Cowboy is set to defend the AEW World Championship against Bryan Danielson at Winter Is Coming later tonight.