Former WWE/current AEW star Adam Copeland recently appeared as a guest on Not Sam (Sam Roberts) Wrestling podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling. During the discussion, Copeland compared the Attitude Era to today:
“If you’re looking for quality over necessarily maybe just quantity, the wrestling is by far better now, but the characters were, I think what the great part about the Attitude Era was and I’ve said this, you could have Crash Holly come out first with a massive reaction. From top to bottom on that lineup, everyone had an established character. Even if you’re just trying to figure it out, even if you’re stumbling through, you’re still something. I feel like somewhere along the way, because the onus got put so much on the wrestling, the character side of things got a little bit lost. So now you can get, although they’re all great matches, everybody’s trying to have the match of the year, but do I care about them as much, because I’m not invested in the person who’s doing the moves. That, to me, was one of the biggest learning curves I had to understand. It’s like, okay, when they care about the character, they’ll care even more about what moves you do and you don’t have to do a spear off the top of a ladder, and if you do, you can save it for main event in Toronto against John Cena, a TLC match for the Heavyweight Championship. That means a double FU through two tables. If I’m going to spear Mick Foley through a flaming table with thumbtacks in my back, it’s going to be WrestleMania. It was along that time when I realized, okay, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to make it mean something and to make sure it’s something that’s replayed forever.”
Edge would go on to say, “You can do moves all day long and you’ll get to a certain level. You will. I got to the level where I was wrestling Kurt Angle and wrestling Eddie, King of the Ring, and teaming with Hogan, and it’s a great place to be, but to get further than that there needed to be more. There needed to be more layers. There needed to be a reason. You know, what’s the reason? Okay, this guy loved wrestling. Well, if you’re in it, chances are, not everybody, but about 98% of us loved it. That’s why we got into it and that can’t just be your character.”
On ideas that were talked about when he was in Judgment Day:
At one point it was talked about a cauldron with bubbling black fluid and I’m holding a pitchfork, and it’s like, whoa. I don’t want to do that because that’s not going to work. Then there was one week they wanted us to float to the ring. I was like, ‘What?’ They said, ‘Well, no, we’ll put it on like a dolly.’
On why he went to AEW and how much longer he plans on wrestling:
“I can do this for a limited time, because it is all limited. Even though it’s been four or five years back now, it’s not like I got another four or five in front of me. I know I don’t. We’re looking at like a two year window here to be able to get as much done as I can get done, tell as many stories as I can, and try and help talent along the way with that and I need to be there more and to do that and I want to be there more to do that because even still, it’s not like the schedule was back when I was riding 220 or 250 days a year. At most, it’s two times a week and that’s very doable to still be the dad I need to be, to be the partner I need to be. I still have the time and the energy to do that because it’s not as all consuming as it was. I don’t let it be as all consuming as it used to be either. But by the schedule, it just becomes less all consuming. I wanted to be able to do as much as I could while I could and that felt like the place I was going to be able to be allowed to do that. That’s when it really, I was like, that’s where I gotta go.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
