Adam “Hangman” Page isn’t where he dreamed he would be 10 years after he began his professional wrestling career, but he has still done more than he’d ever imagined in that time.

Growing up in Virginia, he first exposure to the business was WWE and he naturally envisioned himself eventually working at the top of the company when he first stepped into the ring in May of 2008 as a 16 year old.

Ten years later he is signed with Ring of Honor, working with New Japan Pro Wrestling and is a member of the Bullet Club, one of the hottest groups in wrestling. WWE is the furthest thing from his mind as he and Ring of Honor come to the Hammerstein Ballroom on Saturday June 2 for the NYC Excellence show.

“Of course those are your first goals,” Page said in a phone interview prior to his six-man tag match with The Young Bucks, his partners against Punishment Martinez and The Briscoes.

“Like ‘Oh I want to be a WWE champion or go to WrestleMania,’ but I guess as I’ve matured as a performer I’ve realized that that is not something that is a goal for me whatsoever any more.”

The 26-year-old Page, whose real name is Stevie Woltz, has taken a unique road to this point in his career — being one of the rising stars in the industry and looking to transition from a mainly tag team wrestler and pursue his first singles championship in Ring of Honor.

Page earned his associates degree in high school and graduated from Virginia Tech in two years with a degree in communications. He was 19 and teaching journalism and graphic design at a high school in Virgilina, Va. while wrestling on the weekends. He grew to enjoy both, but knew wrestling was what he wanted to pursue.

“I guess when I started teaching I hated it and it was something I did because I needed a job, but honestly by the end of it there I kind of enjoyed it,” Page said. “I guess it’s something maybe I’d go back to one day, who knows. It’s something that I’ve found I’ve become passionate about, but I guess wrestling has always been my number one passion and that’s what I was always working toward.”

He spent five years teaching and described his style as “laid back.” At first he was wrestling three weekends a month at local events and then started working with Ring of Honor in 2011. Page eventually began wrestling every weekend around the US and internationally.

“So [teaching and wrestling] became very tough and it was something I knew I could not last long,” he said.

Page hasn’t looked back since and has seen his career reach a new level since joining Bullet Club in May 2016 and taking on the Hangman persona. The character has evolved in a short time. It began as someone who carried a noose around and even quickly dangled another wrestler over the ropes to the floor on the night he joined Bullet Club.

Page has smoothed the edges around the persona and is more comfortable with it now, carrying a cut rope to the ring and having hangman being associated with his privates instead of something that could be viewed as offensive. He said he listened to and adapted with the critiques he received.

“I think I’ve gotten to the point where whether it’s an issue where family members have committed suicide or things like that or maybe it’s the racial undertones with what I was doing, I feel like I have gotten away from that enough that it’s not really an issue anymore,” Page said.

That doesn’t mean he and Bullet Club are not pushing the envelope creatively. On the American Bullet Club’s YouTube show “Being The Elite,” Page is currently in a storyline where he is a suspect in the murder of independent wrestler Joey Ryan.

Page said he has “took issue” with his friends’ fondness for Ryan in the past. He has also denied any wrongdoing even after the show revealed security camera footage of someone who looks like him leaving Ryan’s hotel room the night of the “murder.”

“I’ve been kind of quiet on it and I’ve had some people tweeting me about the security footage that was found and that’s not me,” Page said. “I just want to put that out there. That’s not me.”

Stories like that and the gray area between real life and storylines is what makes “Being the Elite,” which is a mix of the wrestlers doing travel Vlogs and scripted scenes, a unique program.

“Some shows, if you tune into “Monday Night Raw’ and you found out that one character was murdered and there’s murder mystery, it doesn’t really work well,” he said. “It doesn’t translate…I think with ‘Being The Elite’ we’ve been able to essentially do anything that we’ve wanted to do and fans have been receptive to it.”

It’s that spirit which helped fellow Bullet Club members Cody Rhodes and Matt and Nick Jackson sell out the 10,000-seat Sears Centre for their Sept. 1 All In event in Chicago that featured talent from multiple promotions in less than 30 minutes. Page hopes the event, which has the unheard-of distinction of being funded and promoted solely by the talent, can change performers perception of what is possible for them outside of WWE and not “sell your soul to be successful.”

WWE had recently debuted former indy stars Ricochet and the War Raiders on NXT and have reportedly signed the likes of Keith Lee and Io Shirai, who is arguably the best women’s wrestler in the word.

“You know, seeing these announcements for guys getting signed to go to wrestling school [the WWE Performance Center] and some of them kind of hurt because I know how good they are and I know with more time what they can do outside of the machine and how much more valuable they can be,” Page said. “I hope that more people with events like this become more confident in their own abilities to work outside of the machine.”

That is exactly what Page has done and he has lofty goals as a singles wrestler for the rest of the year in Ring of Honor and in Japan. He hopes to compete in New Japan’s August G1 Climax tournament. The winner gets a shot at the promotion’s heavyweight title.

In Ring of Honor, his sights right now are on Martinez, one of his opponents Saturday at NYC Excellence, which can also be seen on the Honor Club streaming service. The pair have had multiple scheduled matches canceled because of pre-match altercations that have cost each other championships.

“There’s a lot of bad blood in this one between myself and Martinez and The Bucks and the Briscoes,” Page said. “And hey man, this is New York City. This is Hammerstein. We don’t hold held back in Hammerstein.”