Bully Ray Believes Samoa Joe Outperformed Hangman Adam Page At AEW Full Gear 2025

Bully Ray has praised new AEW World Champion Samoa Joe and made a pointed remark about Hangman Adam Page following their match at AEW Full Gear.

Ray explained on a recent edition of "Busted Open" that Joe was a standout star during his early years in ROH, facing off against future greats like AJ Styles and CM Punk, to highlight Joe's talent. While analyzing the match between Joe and Page, Ray made a bold statement, saying that Joe looked like a wrestler, whereas Page looked like someone pretending to be one.

"We're always talking about Hangman, Hangman, the Hangman experiment. Is Hangman the guy? When you talk about Hangman Adam Page and Samoa Joe in the same sentence as the AEW World Heavyweight Champion, is there even a choice in your mind who 'the guy' is? It's like almost, it's so right there in front of your face. I remember seeing Joe in the ring with Hangman when the match started, and Joe had Hangman in the corner, and just the way Joe was punching and chopping, and his aggressiveness, and the way he kind of engulfed Adam Page, I'm like, there's two different dudes in there — one's a man, one looks like a boy. One looks like a wrestler, one looks like he's playing wrestler. That's the feeling I got," said Ray.

Joe and Page's match headlined this past weekend's Full Gear, where the former hit a Muscle Buster inside the steel cage to win the match and become AEW world champion again.

Bully Ray further emphasized what makes Samoa Joe stand out from the rest, naming two important ingredients that can make or break a star.

"Credibility, believability — those are the two words that come to mind whenever I talk about Samoa Joe. Samoa Joe is a stud in that wrestling ring. He's a stud in the world of professional wrestling," he said.

The WWE legend stated that AEW hasn't used Joe to his maximum potential, despite him holding a world title before his recent title win. He hopes that AEW corrects their past mistake of how Joe was booked during this title run, and wishes he holds on to it for a long time.

"I don't believe that AEW used Samoa Joe to his maximum potential. He did have a world championship run a couple of years ago, [but it was] transitional. And I'm hoping that this run with the championship is not transitional just to get it back onto Swerve. Joe can be your guy that you can have a babyface chase for a long time. And if you tell me that you have something in place that's going to, you know, take a minimum of six months, maybe a maximum of a year with Swerve and Joe, okay, I'll be on board. I'm willing to listen. I'm going to get invested in your story. But you cannot get that championship off of Joe too quickly. Joe is the real deal."

It seems that Joe will go on to feud with former AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland next, after the latter appeared in the ring following Joe's win.