A top AEW star has weighed in on the debate regarding violent matches, following conversation regarding the graphic nature of the AEW Revolution 2026 main event between MJF and “Hangman” Adam Page.
Unlike WWE which has long veered away from high amounts of graphic violence in its matches, AEW has embraced a hardcore style since its inception in 2019, with many of the company’s most famous and revered bouts featuring blood, weapons and hotly debated spots.
The most recent example of this came at AEW Revolution 2026, where MJF and “Hangman” Adam Page went to war for over 45 minutes in a Texas Death Match – with glass, barbed wire and a syringe among the tools used during the bout.
Swerve Strickland, who previously faced off with Page in violent encounters at AEW Full Gear 2023 and AEW All Out 2024, spoke with Simon Miller and was asked to weigh in on AEW’s violent matches debate following MJF vs. Page.
While he believes his feud with Page is an example of where a high level of violence is “justified,” Strickland believes that violence shouldn’t just be utilized for the sake of it:
“I would say the means and the hatred between two characters for the violence to go that far has to be justified.
“I felt like me and Hangman was very justified seeing as we pushed boundaries with each other as men, not just characters, but as men. I went into his home, he burnt down my house. Like that kind of warrants being dropped into a cinder block, that warrants the syringe and all the violence.
“That’s the connection we’ve had and all the equity we put in that year, to get that far, to push things that far. I feel like it has to justify the means, the motive, why I’m doing this.
“Like the staple gun was like stapling the picture of his kid’s painting that I ripped off his refrigerator when I went to his home, it was a call back to those things. Then I stapled my family picture that was in the photos that I had for the house back on his face and stuff, so it was call backs and reasonings and stuff like that.
“It’s all about having a justification for the violence between two characters and not just doing it for the sake of doing it, to try and top it.”
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Are AEW Going Too Far With The Violence?
While many fans do enjoy AEW’s hardcore nature, particularly in comparison to WWE’s very safe and formulaic approach to weapons-based matches of the “PG Era”, the volume in which fans see blood and weapons on AEW TV and pay-per-view has diminished its impact.
As Strickland mentions, violence shouldn’t be a case of trying to top the match that came before it, but with every passing Texas Death Match on AEW TV it feels as if that is what the company are out to achieve.
Limiting the highly violent matches to just the most personal blood feuds is a way to make them feel special once again and ensure that fans don’t get burnt out and/or desensitised, and this could be a way to make stipulations such as Texas Death feel special again.
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