AEW World Tag Team Champion and professional wrestling legend Adam Copeland appeared on The Ariel Helwani Show to discuss various topics, including his journey thus far in the company.
Copeland said, “It’s been fun. And I think — I say that word, and it sounds like a simple word. But that was really the goal, was to have fun. I’m not chasing championships or — you know, they’re props, let’s face it. I’m not doing that. I just wanted to come and have fun and create with some performers that I’d never had a chance to touch. That and the fact that I knew I’d get a chance to team with Jay again and go against teams like FTR and the Bucks, those were big things to want to be able to try and do. And I knew there was only one place to do that. And I had kind of run the gamut with WWE. There was much left to do with either — for the company or for me. To me, that writing was pretty clearly on the wall. It was more along the lines of, ‘Am I going to go to AEW or am I going to retire?’ And during the match with Sheamus, I still didn’t even really know. Because I was having so much fun out there with him and loving that experience that I truly wasn’t sure. But then in looking at the roster in AEW and talking to Tony. And after the Toronto show and looking at the landscape, it became a no brainer the more I looked at it.”
On whether he would have retired by now without AEW:
“Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would’ve been done by now. Because I think I probably would’ve come back for a year with WWE and then retired how everyone wanted it to happen and that would be that. But man, this has breathed new life in terms of the creative avenue we can take. Because again, I feel like we’d kind of driven down most of those avenues with WWE.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
