After spending 25 years in the WWE Universe, it's understandable that Adam Copeland views the professional wrestling business through the lens of Sports Entertainment.

Sure, Copeland clearly keeps up with professional wrestling as a whole, as he knew plenty of names on the AEW roster and has even suggested that he would love to wrestle Kazuchika Okada at the Tokyo Dome, but when he looks for an example from his past when discussing the sport, it's understandable that the “Rated-R Superstar” would draw from RAW or SmackDown, where he wrestled the vast majority of his career.

Fortunately, that experience pool makes for some very interesting comps of AEW wrestlers to performers from his WWE past, with the “Rated-R Superstar” declaring that Darby Allin reminds him of not one but two wrestlers who will one day join him in the WWE Hall of Fame, as he explained to Chris Jericho on Talk is Jericho.

“A guy like Darby. I know he's already a lynchpin to this place and is one of the foundations, but that guy, he's special,” Adam Copeland told Chris Jericho via Fightful. “I told him this and I meant it with the utmost respect because sometimes when you compare to other people…it's just natural to compare. I was like, ‘You're Rey Mysterio with Jeff Hardy splashed all over you.' That's awesome. He does (have the x-factor). He has that thing. He knows how to sell. How to be aggressive, when to be aggressive, it's fun to see. Meeting him, seeing his attitude, I really think that guy is special.”

Whoa, a mixture of Rey Mysterio and Jeff Hardy, you say? Aka two of the very best high-flyers to ever come out of the WWE system? Goodness gracious, that's not a comparison most wrestlers want to draw from, if for no other reason than the lofty expectations it sets. Still, from a purely technical standpoint, Allin is the sort of underdog babyface who flies around and is able to take an ungodly amount of punishment and still get back up to fight for the honor of the fans. Though he certainly does it his own way, with a Hot Topic-meets-Zumiez sort of vibe, in the end, if Copeland thinks Allin's a star of that caliber, maybe the hype is real after all.

Adam Copeland reflects on the end of his WWE run.

Elsewhere in his conversation with Chris Jericho on Talk is Jericho, Adam Copeland reflected on his final run in WWE and his final match with Sheamus specifically.

Though he obviously decided to keep his wrestling dreams alive, signing with AEW on a multi-year deal, for a time, Copeland really did contemplate retiring and probably would have, if his family wasn't so supportive.

“To their point, to WWE’s point is, you know, well, if you’re around too much, it’s not special. And I can see that, I get it. I just felt like if I’ve got two years or if I’ve got a year then let’s go. That’s really all it boiled down to, and then I look at it, and you know, when I did sit down with my family and talk and my girls made it real simple they said just go with Uncle Jay,” Copeland told Jericho via TJR.

“I mean, when a nine-year-old can really simplify for you like that and just kind of smack in the face with like, clearly it’s gotta be that dad. Like, what do you think? Because for a while, like, after the Toronto show, I was like, God, this might be it, man. Because I was loving it. We [Adam and Sheamus] just in there, and we’d never worked singles, but it was so much fun, and the crowd was just, you know, halfway through I was like, man, this might be it, this might be because this is so much fun. And I want my last match whatever that is to feel fun and that was.

“So I really took some time to just kind of sit on my butt, and then sit with it and see where were my heart and my brain sometimes have different ideas. And I just needed to kind of get through all of that and decide where it was going to be. And again, the girls just really simplified it for me and made it a kind of a no-brainer when they said that.”

Had Copeland decided he was done after his match with Sheamus, few fans would have held it against him, but after signing with AEW, it's clear the “Rated-R Superstar” still believes he has things to give back to the wrestling business, which is why he's putting over performers like Darby Allin when he has no requirement to do so.