Adam Copeland aka Edge Interview
Daniel Robert Epstein

Adam Copeland, aka Edge, is a wrestling prodigy who has held numerous titles such as World Tag Team Champion, WWE Tag Team Champion, Intercontinental Champion and WCW U.S. Champion. At 16, he attended WrestleMania VI at the Toronto SkyDome to watch Hulk Hogan battle the Ultimate Warrior. Twelve years later, he returned to the SkyDome to participate as a wrestler himself. Ironically, Hulk Hogan was also on the card - the two of them went on to win Hogan's first World Tag Team in Hogan's 20+ year career. Adam is now the author of his first book, Adam Copeland On Edge.

UGO: You wrote this book after you hurt your neck. Was it something to pass the time or is Vince McMahon telling everyone to write a book?

ADAM COPELAND: No, it's not that at all. I had a year off and I thought, "OK, I have this year with basically nothing to do." At first, I couldn't do anything physically. I was just sitting on my couch watching TV and getting exhausted going from the couch to the kitchen. I mean, that surgery takes it out of you. So I thought, "Well, I have to do something constructive with my time." My mind was still going 120 miles per hour, but my body was just shutting down on me. I didn't want to sit there, mope and feel sorry for myself. I'd always kept a journal throughout my career, so I took all those journals and read through them. I just started putting everything into book format. I wrote it longhand in a notebook and I called my buddies up and said, "Do you remember this story?" Then they'd add things here or there that I'd forgotten. I'd call my mom and do the same thing and really, I just started writing it for my eventual kids and grandkids thinking that it might be kind of cool for them to read one day. I'd always kept it up on WWE.com while I was off so people from the office were reading it and thought that it was pretty entertaining. I was asked if I would be interested in doing a book. I said that I would because I do read so much. I'm so into reading that I thought that it'd be cool to see the name "Adam Copeland" on the spine of a book, which is why I said, "Listen, if I can do this thing myself, yes. If you want me to have a ghostwriter, then no. I'm not going to do it." They asked me to send up about twenty chapters, which I did, and they said, "Let's do this" and it kind of just kept going from there. So it worked out pretty cool.

UGO: Since it is a WWE book, is there anything they disapproved of and removed?

ADAM: Actually, surprisingly no. Mind you, in my career, I've never had anything backstage that was controversial. The most controversial thing was, I forget what chapter it is where Christian and I were accused of a crime that never happened. That was the most controversial thing and it was much more controversial than any kind of wrestling disagreement backstage. This was like a life-altering thing that someone was trying to accuse us of that wasn't true. So that to me was something that if they were going to cut something out that might've been it. But they didn't. When it comes to the actual politics of wrestling, I've never really encountered too much of it because I don't really go in for all of that. I'm having fun doing what I'm doing and don't have any complaints. I know that Rick Flair's book had a lot of stuff where he ran into a lot of people that gave him problems or whatever it was throughout the years. I've just never had that so we weren't going to make up any issues just to put it in a book. There wasn't a whole lot of editing that the company wanted me to do. If anything, they wanted me to try and find some dirt, but there's not much there.

UGO: How did you hurt yourself?

ADAM: It was just a gradual progression of matches and ladder matches and no disqualification matches against Eddie Guerrero and getting hit in the head with the chairs.

UGO: So it wasn't just one specific incident?

ADAM: It wasn't just one but a culmination of things over time. My neck finally got to a point where it ached all the time and I didn't know why. I assumed obviously that it was what I do for a living, but I didn't know what the problem was. I just thought that it was a knot in my neck and then my hands started tingling and so I thought, "Okay, it's just a pinched nerve." Then I started losing strength in my left arm but you always try and push it off. Finally, my left arm atrophied and it just basically started to wither away. So I went to Chris Benoit and he said that that's exactly what had happened to him. I thought, "Great, well, that means back surgery, then." I went to the doctor and he concurred and said that if I kept going it'd be a wheelchair for me. So I had to get surgery.

UGO: Does wrestling feel different?

ADAM: I've been back at wrestling for seven months now and I think that I'm different, but I'd like to think that I'm better and smarter. You won't see me diving off of a 15-foot ladder. That would be the only difference. I don't have to fall off of a ladder through a table in order to get attention now. I feel like I can do it with just wrestling.

UGO: Obviously a lot of wrestlers are putting out books, how do you make yours different?

ADAM: One thing that I've always said about this industry is that everyone's story of getting to where they are in this industry is different. It's not going to be like football where you came up through high school, then college, then you tear some knee ligaments or whatever. It's not going to be like that. I won my training for wrestling when I was 17 through a paper and an essay contest for a newspaper in Toronto. Then from there I drove across frozen lakes, which we fell through in the middle of winter in Manitoba. Then we landed on lakes with pontoon planes with midgets and had to weight the plane so that we wouldn't go down. I wrestled in barns in Tennessee in front of six people sitting on bales of hay. I had a can of tuna a day to eat. So everyone's story is different and that was mine. I knew that it was going to be different from everyone else's because every road to get to the WWE is different. It's not a strict kind of format like any other sport or form of entertainment. It's always going to be a kind of messed-up path to get there.

UGO: You are very close with your mom. Were you worried about her reading this book?

ADAM: No, not at all. I couldn't wait for her to read it actually because I knew how proud she was going to be and I was finally able to give her the credit that I've always wanted to give her.

UGO: How did you come up with your signature move, "The Spear?"

ADAM: It wasn't any kind of real monumental thing. In '98 I was supposed to run into a guy and he said, "Why don't you just tackle me, like a football tackle?" I said, "Yeah, all right, cool, that'll look pretty intense." It got a good reaction and so I just stuck with it.

UGO: Do you think that contributed to your neck injury?

ADAM: I think so. I make sure that I don't ram headfirst into their sternum or anything. I always make sure that it's the shoulder, which is the side of my neck where the disc is ruptured, too. Landing on rungs of a ladder neck-first isn't going to help it, either.

UGO: You're only 31 years old. Is it that common for wrestlers to get injured that bad at such a young age?

ADAM: It kind of varies. Rhino got it when he was 26. Steve Austin got it when he was 34. Chris Benoit got it when he was 32. I got it done when I was 29. Lita got it done when she was 26. It's not so much an age thing. It's just that we put our bodies through a lot of abuse and some people end up tearing a shoulder, tearing a knee and some people end up breaking their necks.

UGO: Did you ever think about quitting wrestling?

ADAM: No, not at all. I mean, maybe if I were the first one to have gone through that surgery, then maybe some doubts would've started to creep in. But you know, I had a whole network of people that I could talk to who had been through it. If I started to have that, "This week hasn't felt good, is that normal?" I could call someone. It was almost like going to an AA meeting but of degenerated necks. We could all sit there and talk about what was normal and what wasn't.

UGO: You said you were an avid reader. What do you like to read?

ADAM: I'm into fiction, children's books, sports, autobiographies and anything that I can pretty much get my hands on. I like music books about The Beatles to Keith Moon to the history of heavy metal to Tommy Lee to Anthony Kiedis and Henry Rollins' series of books. I have an autobiography on every heavyweight champion since Max Schmeling. I have all the Stephen King books, the Grishams, the Harry Potters and things like that.

UGO: How about The Lord of the Rings?

ADAM: ADAM: Yeah, I have The Lord of the Rings. I have The Spider Web Chronicles and A Series of Unfortunate Events. I've got The Chronicles of Narnia. I've got a lot of Terry Pratchett.

UGO: What about comic books?

ADAM: Definitely, without a doubt. Since I've come back from the injury, I haven't gotten anything, though. I was really avid up until that point, but then I got so busy and I've been so busy since then I haven't been to my comic book shop in about four months. So I'm way behind, but I heard that one of my favorite characters got offed, Thor. So I was a little bit upset about that. How do you kill a god? I don't know. Who am I to say?

UGO: Have you thought about writing fiction?

ADAM: Yeah, I always thought that a children's book would be fun. You know, something along the lines of The Spider Web Chronicles or something like that I thought would be fun. Not necessarily a children's book, but like eight to 12 years old, that type of thing. I always thought that writing one comic book would be fun because the idea of hitting that deadline every month would probably be pretty stressful. But I always thought that it'd be cool to illustrate the cover of a comic book once and write one.

UGO: Are any of your drawings in your book?

ADAM: No, because they're all DC and Marvel characters. By the time that they got them, there wasn't time to get the copyrights in place for it. Maybe the next one.

UGO: Is Thor your favorite comic book character?

ADAM: Thor is definitely right up there. It's all the old standards like The Punisher and the X-Men. I'm more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy, but then of course you've got to love Batman and Brian Azzarello is a great writer with 100 Bullets.

UGO: Your high school yearbook said you were most likely to win a WWE Championship. You must have really been into wrestling.

ADAM: I was the wrestling guy at school. You know how there's the comic book guys, there's the smoking guys, there's the heavy metal guys and I was the wrestling guy. That was well known to the point where they put it in the yearbook.

UGO: I read that you first met Hulk Hogan at a Kid Rock concert.

ADAM: Yeah, it was pretty surreal because I went in there just going to see a concert. It was this box down at the Ice Palace in Tampa and I walk in and bam, there's Hogan sitting there with the bandana and the bleached blonde hair. We just kind of struck up a conversation and that was kind of the beginning of a nice little friendship that I never ever thought would happen. To actually meet him, rub elbows with him and then later to team up with him was amazing. Then to also go to his house on the fourth of July and watch it while we had a BBQ I never thought would happen. It was definitely a milestone and one of the best moments in my career, without a doubt.

UGO: Do you remember the first match you saw on TV?

ADAM: Well, the first thing that I saw was Hulk Hogan promos, it wasn't even a match. He was saying, " Say your prayers, drink your milk, eat your vitamins" and it just hit me. The first live match that I went to was at Maple Leaf Gardens. It was Tony Cannonball versus Renee Dupree and the main even that night was Jesse Ventura and The Macho Man Randy Savage against Tito Santana and the Junkyard Dog. That was the first main event that I saw live.

UGO: What other belts do you want to get?

ADAM: The championship belt is last one that I have to win. I've won everything else. Since the book has come out I now hold the all-time record for Tag Team title wins. I've had those 11 times now. The Intercontinental title I've had five times. I've had the U.S. Championship. I won the King of the Ring. Now what else do I have to do, but win the World and that's what I got into this business for in the first place, to do that.

UGO: What do you have to do to get to the point where you can win that title?

ADAM: Connect with the crowd to the point where when you're in there you're suspending their disbelief, you're entertaining them and they respect you. There is a very big respect factor when it comes to wrestling fans and wrestlers. If they don't respect you, you're not going to get the world title. So you need to pay your dues or strike a chord to where they go, "OK, this guy is entertaining. He can cut a promo. I believe in his character. He believes in his character." I've just recently turned heel so I'm a bad guy again and I'm having so much fun with it. I can feel that it's making that kind of connection, so hopefully it's just a matter of time.

UGO: Is it more fun being a bad guy than a good guy?

ADAM: Oh, without a doubt. I'm probably better as a good guy, but it's definitely more fun to be a bad guy. I mean, it's so much more fun to piss people off.

UGO: Who was your favorite bad guy?

ADAM: Ooh, tough call. I loved Mr. Perfect. I thought that Savage was entertaining. I liked Brett Hart when he was bad guy and Sean Michaels when he was a bad guy. I liked them better when they were good guys just because that's the way I was when I was a kid, but even as bad guys I liked them, too.

UGO: You were in Highlander: Endgame. That must have been a big deal since you are a fan of fantasy.

ADAM: Yeah, it was one of those deals that came out of the blue. So there wasn't like a whole lot of looking forward to it or anything. I got a call and they said, "Do you want to be in it?" I thought, "Okay, sure. I'll fight a Romanian." I didn't know what to expect and the Hollywood thing isn't as fun as what I do. There's a whole lot of hurry up and wait. The whole process of it isn't as fun, but then you see the finished product and you think, "OK, that was worth it."

UGO: Are you interested in getting into more movies?

ADAM: Not really. Honestly, that sounds lazy, but only if it were to fall into my lap. I heard that they're making a new Thor movie and as much as I'd love to play Thor, I'm not going to get an agent and try to read for the part or anything. If they were to call me and say, "Hey, do you want to play Thor?" Then yeah, I'd do that. Last year I was rumored to be in the new Batman and then I was rumored to be in The Longest Yard and now I'm rumored to be in Thor. If it were to happen, great. But if not, I'm not going to pursue it.

UGO: What superpower would you like to have?

ADAM: I guess invulnerability would be cool because then I wouldn't have the injuries that I've had. You know what, it's simple, but flying. That would be pretty damn cool. I've kind of flown before if you count jumping off ladders, but not quite to that extent.

UGO: What are you favorite DVDs?

ADAM: I've got too many to narrow it down. Recent ones that I've picked up are Family Guy, The Sopranos and The Simpsons is my all-time favorite. But actual movies, obviously I like the comic book movies. I liked Hellboy. I thought that was great. I'm pretty much wide open to stuff.

Credit: UGO.com
 
 
 

Back