Tony Schiavone Details Hangman Page’s Preparation for Dynamite Impersonation
On a recent episode of What Happened When, Tony Schiavone shared the full backstory of the memorable AEW Dynamite segment where ‘Hangman’ Adam Page impersonated him.
Schiavone admitted he was initially unsure about the idea. “I was kind of skeptical about it, but he pulled it off. Man. He really did,” Schiavone said.
Schiavone revealed that Page had been planning the segment for weeks. “Hangman had talked to me about this for a couple of weeks,” he said. “To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure what day it was going to happen… then all of a sudden, hit me, of course, the Halloween edition, right?”
The two worked on the details, including Page adding some extra size. “He had, kind of put a little padding on his midsection. And I said, ‘Hang on, just one second. I don’t think I’m that fat.’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t think so either.’ But he said that, ‘but I’m putting this padding on.'”
‘You Walk Like an Old F**king Man’
The most detailed part of the impression was Page trying to nail Schiavone’s signature walk. “Then he was then he was saying, he said, ‘I need to watch you walk, to see how you walk,'” Schiavone recalled. “And I was walking backstage, and he was watching me. Then he would start walking. I said, ‘you walked like an old fu**ing man. I don’t walk like an old man.’ Then I thought, ‘well, I am an old man, so maybe I do.'”
Schiavone even gave Page a specific physical tic to use. “I said, ‘I have this neck thing that my neck was operated on back in 1995… my neck kind of leans to the left a little bit.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ve noticed.’ Okay, good. And so he had it down.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit What Happened When with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
