Edge Reflects On His In-Ring Return, Why He’s Proud Of His Match At WWE Backlash
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Edge recently made an appearance on Cheap Heat and discussed his in-ring return this year, which included matches at WrestleMania 36 and Backlash.
On his match with Randy Orton at WWE Backlash:
Edge: “I was very happy with it. And what I did was, I threw that Greatest Wrestling Match ever out of the equation almost as soon as Vince told me. Because there’s no such thing, it’s completely subjective. I would guarantee that all three of us are going to have their idea of what the greatest wrestling match ever is. Who’s the greatest band ever? What’s the greatest song ever, what’s the greatest movie ever? There is no such thing. So when you can lose that and realize, oh okay, this is just a promotional tool, got it. But what I wanted to do with it is try and make it a love letter to wrestling, a love letter to this thing that I have loved my entire life. So how do we do that? Alright well let’s have Howard Finkel introduce this. Let’s go with the MSG microphone, let’s have old-school introductions with Charles Robinson in a long-sleeved shirt and a bow tie explaining the rules to us.”
“You know, I wanted to try these pick-up shots after the fact to see if they would work. I don’t think they did, but apparently Vince loved them, and a couple of them got put in. And I wasn’t a huge fan of that but beyond that, I was really happy with the fact that we were able to go out there and have a 48, 50 minute, whatever it was match, and with barely an audience and try and pull this thing off. You know, if anyone got too bogged down on the, ‘Well I don’t know where I’d rate it,’ you’re missing the point, man. It’s really just supposed to be a love letter to wrestling and something to try and enjoy when nothing else is happening in the world, except for a lot of really bad things. That’s all it was, and to be able to go out there and go 48 minutes in essentially my second match back, I’m proud of that, and I feel like I didn’t really miss a step, even though I tore my tricep.”
“We did the match straight through, boom done, and I should have been happy with that because that’s all it needed to be. But in driving down to Orlando on one of these trips, because I’ve been driving my pickup, I haven’t been flying, when they told me the Greatest Wrestling Match Ever, I was like, okay, well how do we make this thing different? What if I wore a GoPro? And this way, just try, because if you’re gonna try anything, now’s the time, so right now you can get away with a Boneyard match, and now you can get away with these angles because you’re not in front of a live audience, so I just wanted to try something different. If it didn’t work, great, we don’t put it in the match. But if it does work, now we have a new tool for the entire industry and for the company going forward to be able to dip into because, if these work, imagine the camera angles you could get for a ladder match, imagine the angles you could get for any kind of stipulation match. That was my thinking. Now I can look back and know they weren’t needed.”
On their match at WWE WrestleMania 36:
Edge: “A lot of what Randy and I had to do on that day was on the fly because a lot of our plans involved going outside and going on the roof of the Performance Center and all of these things. Well, by the time we filmed, it was still daylight. When it’s going to air, it’s not. Okay, crap. We gotta wing it. So what you saw was two guys, without saying a word to each other, winging 41 minutes or whatever of a fight. So everything could have been heard, so we just had to go. What you got was two guys just going in and fighting. And when people say, ‘Well it was just a fight’, well yeah, think of the story. It’s supposed to be a fight.”
“I’m gonna bust my a– and try to give you the best product I possibly can because I’m not gonna phone it I and, to me that’s what WrestleMania was, that’s what Backlash was.”
The full video is available here:
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