Born in the small rural community of Aaron’s Creek in Halifax County, Virginia, Stephen Woltz is about as far from the typical wrestling story as you can get. During his early wrestling career, he worked as a high school journalism and graphic design teacher for five years, stepping away from teaching only when he became a full-time wrestler with NJPW in 2016. A graduate of Virginia Tech, he balanced the classroom and the ring simultaneously — which says everything about both his determination and his unusual path to the top. His ring name was a tribute to two things he loved — Adam from a childhood friend’s first name, Page from Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page — before the “Hangman” moniker was added in 2016 after a savage angle where he literally hanged Chris Sabin with a noose during a Bullet Club beatdown. He spent years in ROH and NJPW building his craft, quietly becoming one of the best performers in the world before AEW gave him the stage he deserved. His story in AEW became one of modern wrestling’s great epics — a cowboy with a drinking problem, crippled by self-doubt, watching his friends achieve success while he fell short again and again, before finally overcoming his demons to win the AEW World Championship from Kenny Omega in November 2021 in one of the most emotionally charged title changes in recent memory. He captured it a second time in July 2025. Hangman Adam Page is the kind of performer that makes you care about wrestling all over again.