WWE Hall Of Famer Edge recently appeared on After The Bell with Corey Graves for an interview covering all things pro wrestling. During the discussion, Edge talked about the origins of The Judgment Day:
“It’s been a year now since we first conceptualized the idea of The Judgement Day. It was over a year ago now. It really started at WrestleMania the night that Priest and I first joined together and that became the initial nucleus of what this thing was, but then it turned into something entirely different and better, honestly.”
“Where it’s at now was the goal that I had in mind. I really thought the concept of Judgment Day, the idea behind it was, here’s these really talented individuals who I truly felt weren’t getting the opportunity that they deserved, and if they got that opportunity, that they could fly with it, they could run with it, whatever analogy you want to use. I had been watching them all since NXT and kind of kept tabs on them and kept my eye on them all these years. So when I was asked about starting a group and was asked who would be in it, the first names I said were Priest, Ripley, Balor. It changed and morphed and went through a lot of different permutations.”
On whether he expected Judgment Day to reach this point:
“I mean, no. I honestly thought maybe we would get to this part of the story now. You just have to make do and figure it out, and thankfully, they were given the reins to take this in a different direction and an entirely different direction than it would have with Edge at the helm. Again, because with Edge at the helm, it’s swimming upstream because we’re trying to get an audience to turn on a character, but they know the backstory to this character. They know the real life story behind this character. They know Adam’s story. So it’s like, well, we don’t really want to hate this guy because he fought back for something that he wanted to get back. He’s also doing something that nobody’s ever done before. He’s wrestling with a triple fusion in his neck, like, no one has ever done that, so it can be hard to hate that, and I was trying. I was trying every little old school heel trick in the book. I was trying to, calling them Cheeto eatin’ bastards and whatever else, but it just wasn’t gonna work. It might have eventually with more time, but it would have taken a lot more work. Whereas Balor, not being as firmly established, even though he’s established, not 25 years of equity within the company. This June is the 25-year anniversary of my TV debut. So you got to figure like, people have grown up watching me. Now they’re bringing their kids and they’re saying to their kids, ‘Hey, check this guy out. He was there when I was a kid.’ That’s where I’m at now.”
“So you have to look at it and kind of work with what you got, and thankfully, all four of them with the addition of Dom, have taken this thing in completely different directions. I think they’re being more of themselves, and when you can be more yourself, then chances are it’s going to work because you’re going to inject the actual person behind the character with some reality, with some truths, with some actual interests with the way you would actually speak, and that to me is absolutely key.”
Edge also commented on working on the Disney TV show Percy Jackson:
“I’ve still been taking the occasional auditions if I think in terms of time frame that it could possibly pan out. I mean, thankfully, gosh, the company has been so good with me throughout it all and making sure that the time can be carved out to make certain things happen.”
“So I read to play Ares, the god of war on Disney Plus. They are doing a Percy Jackson television series. The author of the books is also an executive producer. He’s on board. He wasn’t on board with the movies. He’s on board with this. He wrote some of the script. So the fan base is like, ‘Rick’s involved. This is going to be the way Rick wanted it.’ So I read for it, forgot about it as you do with auditions. This is what you do. Then, I guess about two months later, I had a Zoom meeting with all the executive producers and they said, ‘Okay, when you get out to Vancouver’, and I went, ‘Oh, I got it?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Oh crap. I better talk to everybody then.'”
“Thankfully, everybody, we were able to figure it out and make it work within the story, and if anything it added gas to The Judgment Day because you know, from the I Quit match, I really did the bulk of my work for Percy Jackson. But even the week before the I Quit match, I was out in Vancouver filming all that week, a month actually. It was such a blast.”
“If you had told me at 49 years old, that I’m going to be working for WWE and Disney at the same time, come on. I’ve been so lucky, and there’s been work involved. Don’t get me wrong. But I’ve done so many things that I can check off a list that wouldn’t have even been on the list because I would assume they’re absolutely impossible, yet, they are.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
