>>18147530A face is support to impress or inspire faith in the audience through his actions or personality.
I don't think anyone thought Hangman couldn't beat up Shaffir, so it fails there. Hangman doesn't come off as a badass or anything for this, but again he's knocking out some midget woman. You could say this is an indication he's willing to do anything for the title, but he could have smashed someone who's actually a threat.
So, what this spot really was, was just meaningless shock value booking with no thought behind it, just to elicit a 5 second reaction of "Holy checking crapirino he hit a woman! WWE never does that!" And like most other things in AEW it sucked because it's an entire federation being booked by a mark who doesn't even understand the most basic storytelling and just books things for other marks