Adam Copeland recently spoke with Sports Illustrated to promote AEW’s debut episode of Dynamite at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada this week.
During the discussion, “The Rated R Superstar” spoke at length about his scheduled TNT Championship showdown against longtime friend turned bitter-rival in AEW, Christian Cage.
Featured below are some of the highlights.
On how long it’s been since he and Christian Cage had a match together: “We haven’t wrestled each other since 2010. I was retired for nine years, he was retired for seven. The last time we wrestled against each other in a title match was 22 years ago. The gravity of those dates, it’s incredible to me.”
On being paired with Christian Cage in WWE and how they’ve experienced much of their lives together: “We weren’t two guys slapped together and told to be a tag title–for us, it’s all real. His family. My family. We had our first daughters within eight weeks of each other. All the triumphs, the failures, we’ve been through it all together. And we were both able to make it, which is crazy. Sleeping in Home Ec rooms, the lakes we drove across, the boxes of crap for dinner. We traveled the roads in WWE. Now we’re here in AEW. A large part of our audience has been through a lot of this with us, too.”
On both overcoming potentially career-ending injuries to return to the ring: “We were both told we’d never wrestle again. Then we were different companies, so the possibility for us to wrestle each other wasn’t even there. Now we’re here. And we’re at a point where, in terms of being able to tell a layered story, we’ve never been better. And we’re bringing different talent into the story and giving them a boost. It’s everything I want to do.”
On the match happening on TV instead of PPV: “I’ve heard, ‘Why isn’t this at the pay-per-view?’ To me, where is more important than when. We get to do it in Montreal. There’s no other choice for us but to have it here. My family is coming for this one, cousins and relatives who’ve known Jay for years. There’s something special about doing it in Canada. I am really, really amped up to do this one. I truly think there’s not another story like ours, with this real story. Two friends from Orangeville, Ontario, who made it where we made it because of each other. I’m hoping this is a rabid crowd. This is what I dreamed of–working that guy in Montreal for a championship.”
Check out the complete interview at SI.com.
