RECAP AND REVIEW: Prime Time with Sean Mooney with Edge on how he won free wrestling training, one of the original ideas for his character and what management wanted him to wear, how he got his ring name, main-eventing WrestleMania with The Undertaker

Written Podcast Recap: Prime Time With Sean Mooney – Edge

Release Date: October 24th, 2018

Running Time: 1:54:02

Recap by: Joe Aguinaldo

Show Open

• This podcast will reek of awesomeness. Adam ‘Edge’ Copeland is on the podcast who is one the most decorated WWE superstars.

Working in Ireland

• It was a ‘pinch myself’ moment.
• He was on a Viking ship on the Irish Sea, in full period wardrobe, watching 200 extras wondering how he got there. It was surreal but a blast. He’s been lucky when it comes to acting and roles keep coming up.
• Beth is back in school and still announcing for WWE so Edge is playing Mr. Mom a lot.

Coming from a single parent home and being a father

• Edge always wanted to be a father but was comfortable with the fact he may not be one
• He was worried about being a good father because he never had any experience to pull from but quickly realized that you just do it.

Growing Up In Canada

• Edge had no siblings which is why he thinks he and Jay (Christian) bonded so well when they met in 6th grade.
• Chaco Guerrero jokes Edge and Christian’s story is a movie.
• When Jay moved to Edge’s town (Orangeville), he was the new kid who was on the outside. But he had a ninja star which you could order from Karate magazines. They met after school and start throwing it at a tree. They also both realized they loved wrestling which is how their friendship started.

Writing An Essay and Wrestling Training

• Edge got free wrestling training by writing and winning an essay contest about why he wanted to be a wrestler.
• He got a call from Sweet Daddy Siki as he was one of the finalist of the essay contest
• Siki and Ron Hutchison tried to scare Edge off by telling him some of the horror stories about being a wrestler but Edge still wanted to do it and eventually won the contest.
• The wrestling school was an old boxing gym called Sully’s gym which was in a rough neighbourhood in Toronto called Parkdale.
• They trained in a boxing ring which is rock hard ring and smaller than a normal wrestling ring. It toughened him up quickly. His first bump felt he had liquids coming out of every hole in his body and realized that wrestlers weren’t quite human.
• Edge had a fire lit under his a** because appreciated the gift he had been given
• He bought a car to drive to training but didn’t have car insurance (to give some context, that was a 50 mile drive to and from Sully’s Gym)
• When he first started, Edge didn’t feel like a natural.

What Edge’s Mom Thought

• She never once doubted Edge (at least to him). She was 100% supportive
• While he was training in wrestling, he was also going to school for Television and Radio broadcasting.
• Main reason he took TV/Radio was to help him on his promos.
• He always had the confidence he was going to make the WWE and wanted as many tools as possible when he got there.
• He was comfortable with the mechanics of wrestling but knew he was weak on the mic. Studying TV and radio helped that a bit.

First Match In The WWE

• When Edge started going to different places, that’s when he felt people started noticing him.
• He got to go to Winnipeg where he met Lance Storm and Bad News Brown and they would request to work. with him. He realized he was onto something and needed to put the package together.
• He worked a show and met Carl DeMarco (Bret Hart’s manager at the time). Carl asked Edge for VHS tapes of his work and eventually, Edge got asked to wrestle Bob Holly in a WWF match in Hamilton. Christian drove him to the arena.
• Edge wrestled as Sexton Hardcastle
• The night of the match George ‘The Animal’ Steele pulled Edge aside and told him to keep doing what you’re doing. Other guys like Warrior also said Edge had a good match.
• Bob Holly enjoyed the match. Scott Hall said Edge had ‘it’ and just had to learn how to wrestle in front of 10,000 people instead of 10.
• Edge always loved the feel of going out in front of a big house. There’s nothing that matches the feeling when an entire arena is focused solely on you.

Edge Gets the Call From WWE

• Edge got signed about a year after his match but it was a developmental contract.
• They paid him weekly but told him to keep working wherever he could.
• Edge would go to WWE camps and do dark matches.
• Eventually a year after that they started developing a character.
• Throughout that process people like Bret, Bruce Prichard and Pat Patterson vouched for Edge.
• When Edge first got signed, there was a ring at the TV studio and he worked a match with Michael Hayes who has been pivotal in Edge’s career.

Early Character

• No one had an idea for Adam’s character. They initially think he could talk and at one point they tossed around the idea of making him a deaf mute. He didn’t talk on TV for about a year and a half.
• One night while he was in the Brood they got an opportunity to do a promo and that’s where they realized Edge could talk. 
• Originally they wanted him to wear silk shirts and chains. Edge was more of a purist in terms of the look of a wrestler and came up with a better design.
• He got the Edge name from a radio billboard with Edge in its name.

Thoughts On The Attitude Era

• You could feel a groundswell and that the anti hero was becoming the hero.
• With regards to competition, it didn’t matter who the WWE was up again, they were sold out everywhere.

Wrestling and Injuries

• There was never a point where Edge questioned what they were doing to themselves physically but he can point back to where his issues started
• The Attitude Era dressing room was a bunch of sharks and they had to do something to stand out from Austin or Rock. The competitive locker room drove the physicality
• When he watches his matches back now, he wonders how he did some of the things he did
• They (E&C, The Hardys, The Dudleys) never thought they were changing things in terms of style. They just wanted to steal the show. Edge thinks they went too far but at the time they were young, hungry and indestructible
• Edge remembers a conversation with Austin who told them to be careful because you only have so many bumps on your bump card.
• Edge started feeling the effects of his matches at age 35. His first injury was a torn labrum at 29. It made him realize he could get injured. He never got that fixed which led to another injury which led to another which eventually led to his neck issues.

WrestleMania 16

• Even though he had appeared on previous WrestleManias, this was the first time he and Jay got to perform a match. It felt like their moment and they also were in there with the Hardy’s and the Dudleys. They all knew they could create amazing things.
• Prior to this match the WWE talked about splitting Edge and Christian however, leading up to the match they both got a chance to do commentary and the WWE  realized they were entertaining.
• Then they heard they were winning the tag belts which was a dream come true.

Chemistry between Edge And Christian

• They have always had great chemistry and a 35 year friendship
• It’s the way they’ve always been and also forces them not to take themselves too seriously. They keep each other grounded
• Their friendship is also a reason why they never went down any paths (bad habits)

WrestleMania 24

• Being able to main event WrestleMania 24 against taker was a validation that Edge could be trusted with that responsibility. Anyone who gets into wrestling should have the goal to main event Wrestlemania

Getting and Staying On Top

• Edge thought getting to the WWE would be the toughest thing. Getting there and staying afloat was hard but getting to the top was harder. And staying on top was even harder than that.
• Reinventing your character is key. You have to adapt to new styles, new locker rooms and adapt to doing different matches.
• It’s a tough job but it’s the most amazing job he’s ever had.

Leaving Wrestling

• It was strange because he was still champ. The medical staff probably knew more than Edge did. He had headaches for a long time and trembling in his arms but thought that was normal due to the neck surgeries.
• Thankfully concussions was a bullet he dodged. Where he was affected was his neck.
• The day after WrestleMania, he did commentary and drove home. He got a call from Vince who told him he had to retire. Edge wasn’t totally shocked as he knew after the first neck surgery he was on borrowed time. He didn’t realize what kind of damage he was doing to his neck.
• The head doctor for the WWE (Dr. Maroon) said if he was around when Edge got his neck fusion in 2002, Edge wouldn’t have been wrestling. They would have put the breaks on him then which means all his championship runs would never have happened. If that had happened then, he would have had a different reaction to retiring.
• When they put the brakes on him at 2011, he had accomplished everything he wanted. He was upset but not as devastated as he would have been if it had happened in 2002.
• At that point in his career, Edge Edge wanted to help young guys like Ziggler and Del Rio. He always thought he was going to retire at 40 and ended up retiring at 37. Bottom line, he had a 20 year career, most of it with WWE and there wasn’t much he had left to do.

Haven And Getting Into Acting

• When Edge did his retirement speech, he got a live mic, no script and just went out and talked. Producers from Haven saw his speech and half of them were in tears after his speech. They called WWE and asked if Edge was available.
• A week and a half after he retired, he got asked to do Haven. He was only supposed to do one episode and after shooting two scenes, they asked him if he was available to do more.
• Acting was not something he thought of. He had done one movie with WWE and was clueless when it came to the process of filming. The movie was done at WWE’s suggestion, he never pursued it.
• When he started on Haven, he at least had a movie under his belt. He doesn’t feel that he had any acting chops.
• In his first scene with Haven, the director noticed Edge’s eyebrows were everywhere and he looked like a maniac which wasn’t what the scene called for. He had to pull back the things he had been doing for 20 years because the camera noticed everything
• From that point forward, he realized that’s what he had to work on if he wanted to continue acting. He also realized he liked acting.
• In between the season with Haven to the next, he decided he wanted to try retirement. He grew a big beard and painted. Within 6 months he needed to do something creative.
• Eventually Haven called him to do another season. He didn’t have an agent at the time, he just agreed to do a certain amount of episodes and became a regular on a TV show.
• He was feeling more comfortable but didn’t have the built in confidence with acting. He eventually did get it. He started taking classes then started breaking down other actors and how they acted in specific roles. He would try to find parts of himself in each role he got which is similar to the reinvention of your wrestling character

Vikings

• Haven was his boot camp/college for acting. He then did one episode of the Flash playing a villain which was a bigger role then he got Vikings which was an eye opener. The scope and cast of that show is massive compared to the previous shows he had been on.
• His role started getting bigger and bigger which is a challenge he welcomed.
• Edge thinks there may be a preconceived notion of wrestlers getting into acting roles but people like the Rock and Dave Batista may have helped that.

The Transition from Wrestler To Actor

• During the first two seasons of Haven, Edge still wouldn’t admit to being an actor. But as the show progressed and he started enjoying it, he said he wanted to be an actor and started studying seriously. It was in his 3rd and 4th season with Haven that he started calling himself an actor.
• You can’t do a show like Vikings and not think you’re an actor. If you don’t think you’re an actor on that set, you’re not going to make it.

The Edge And Christian Show That Totally Reeks Of Awesomeness

• They requested Sean be on a show which includes Tommy Dreamer, Funaki, Santino, Edge, Little Guido, Carlito and Vickie Guerrero and Christian
• For this season, they came up with over 100 skits that they used to put the new season together.
• This season is nothing like the first season which is what they envisioned when they were first approached by WWE. They had time to flesh out this season.

Show Wrap

• Sean thanks Edge for being on the podcast and they hope to meet up at Wrestlecade. This is just the beginning for Edge and he is ready for anything.

Show Rating: 8/10

I really dig Sean’s show. He’s a great interviewer. Admittedly, I had heard Edge’s story before on previous interviews and podcasts but it’s still a great story to listen to. Being from Toronto, I know where Edge’s hometown is and I know the area where he trained. That alone makes me respect the drive and determination he had to make it in the WWE on top of what he did in the ring. He’s always well spoken and an interesting interview. Definite thumbs up recommend.

About Joe:

Joe is a long time wrestling fan from Toronto. He is a co-host on the Pull Apart Podcast with Jeff Rush and Caitlin Lavelle as well as a contributor to www.pwpodcasts.com. One of his life goals is to be a guest host on one of Wade Keller’s post show podcasts.  He doesn’t consider himself any sort of expert, he just likes wrestling. Check him out on twitter and instagram @ja113.