When Adam “Edge” Copeland made his debut in AEW during the final moments of WrestleDream, it got the entire wrestling industry buzzing.

Suddenly, after spending 25 years – literally – in WWE, the “Rated-R Superstar” was free to flex the creative juices fans have known were hiding right under the surface for years now in a featured role on national television, and he'd likely get to hold at least one more championship before hanging up his boots for good once and for all.

But what, you may ask, was the deciding factor in joining AEW over sticking it out with WWE? Well, according to Copeland in an interview with CBS Sports, it largely came down to a conversation he had with his wife and daughters, who wanted nothing more than to see him close out his career with his best friend, Christian Cage.

“If we could end this together, that's the dream,” Adam Copeland told CBS Sports. “I sat down with my girls and I'm like, ‘OK, so what does dad do, girls?' What do I do? And I laid out the scenarios for them. Lyric said it and then Ruby agreed, ‘Go be with Uncle Jay and have fun.' And that doesn't mean that I'm not having fun in other places, but they know the most fun I'm going to have is with my best friend of the last 40 years.”

Comparing his final run in WWE with Cage's run in AEW, Copeland noted that the TNT champion appeared to having a ton of fun, and he would like to get in on that action if possible.

“I kind of got the sense there wasn't really a plan [for me in WWE]. I get it because what else do we do? What else is there to do? And after 25 years I've literally done everything there. So what do we do? It wasn't anybody's fault. I was coming up against creative walls too. I was having a hard time coming up with ideas and that's not usually the case. I think they were too,” Copeland said.

“There was also the conundrum that I was contracted for 10 matches a year. I offered to do more, but to their point, it wouldn't feel quite as special, which I understood too… It just felt like neither one of us really had any ideas and that's never been the case before. So when you look at that and then I look at my best friend over there having the time of his life, at a certain point, once I thought, ‘You know what, I still have a window here where I can do this and I don't feel like I'm maximizing that.' I think that was really what it boiled down to.”

Will Cage and Copeland have the sort of side-stitching joy that fans loved for the better part of 25 years in WWE? Maybe yes, maybe no, but the chances appear much higher in AEW over WWE.

Edge really considered retiring after his WWE run.

Elsewhere in his conversation with CBS Sports, Adam Copeland was asked about his final match in WWE with Sheamus, which took place in his hometown of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

While Edge has been pretty open about wanting to do more than WWE was offering him to do, he did strongly consider retiring when his contract came to an end.

“As I got closer to the end of the deal, retirement was a very, very real option. It was not off the table. I really sat with the idea of retirement because I truly thought like, ‘Man, WWE gave me that night. I don't know how that gets topped.' And that's still in my brain,” Copeland said.

“But I guess now it's like, ‘OK, how can I try and top it in this new environment.' Honestly, that Toronto show was a send-off of that character and it was the perfect way for that character to go out. Wrestling a guy that I've never wrestled that I always wanted to. It was just so much fun in there. That night, I'll never forget it. I'll always have that night with me. I told Sheamus that too. That will be one of the most special nights in my career, always.”

Had Edge opted to retire from wrestling full-time at the end of his match with Sheamus, making an appearance or two a year as part of the WWE Universe, no one would have faulted him, but after returning from a career-ending injury that almost ended his time in the ring right on the spot, getting to go at it full-time once more is a pretty incredible opportunity for the “Rated-R Superstar.”