Tony Schiavone addresses Hangman Page angle from AEW Dynamite
Tony Schiavone says he wasn’t sure that Hangman Page would be able to pull off the angle they did on last week’s episode of AEW Dynamite.
Schiavone appeared on the Halloween-themed show dressed as the Phantom of the Opera, the same costume he wore at Halloween Havoc 1990. In the closing moments of Dynamite, however, it was revealed that Page had taken his place under the mask, allowing him to get the jump on an unsuspecting Samoa Joe.
Schiavone discussed the angle on the latest episode of his What Happened When podcast with Conrad Thompson.
“It was a very, very good angle,” Schiavone said on the show. “I didn’t know what to expect to be honest with you. Hangman had talked to me about this for a couple of weeks. And I was like, ‘Sure, whatever you want to do, it’s fine.’ And to be honest with you, I wasn’t sure what day it was going to happen. He had talked about it for a couple of weeks, then all of a sudden hit me. Of course, the Halloween edition, right?”
Schiavone said he and Page worked on handing off the tie and the jacket, but he objected to the padding added to Page’s midsection for the segment, saying, “I don’t think I’m that fat.”
Schiavone continued:
“Then he was saying, ‘I need to watch you walk to see how you walk.’ And I was walking backstage and he was watching me. Then he would start walking. I said, ‘You walk like an old f—ing man. I don’t walk like an old man.’ Then I thought, well, I am an old man so maybe I do. So it happened. We had a lot of people help us out.”
Schiavone said that he was skeptical Page would be able to pull it off.
“To be very honest with you, I was kind of skeptical about it, as I am many things that we do. But hey, he pulled it off. He really did. And congratulations for that, the fans really popped, and it ended up being pretty cool.”
Page will defend the AEW World Championship against Samoa Joe later this month at Full Gear on November 22. On this week’s episode of Dynamite, Page will team with HOOK and Eddie Kingston in a trios match against The Opps’ Katsuyori Shibata, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Joe.
The full episode of What Happened When with Tony Schiavone and Conrad Thompson is available below. Schiavone’s comments about the angle with Page begin around the three-minute and 25 second mark.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.