Though Adam Copeland has been a member of the AEW Galaxy for the better part of three months, his career is, was, and will almost wholly be defined by his decades in WWE, where he was one of the top guys in the entire promotion through multiple eras of the company's history.
Discussing his experience working for The Fed in a special appearance on Not Sam Wrestling ahead of his debut in Jacksonville as part of AEW Homecoming, Copeland celebrated the storytelling from the Attitude Era but acknowledged that everything wasn't quite as rosy as some fans may recall.
“There's a lot of people that really pine for those Attitude Era days. And I'm like, ‘Okay. It was fun. And it was on fire. So you can't dispute that.But it was like three-minute matches. They were haikus. You couldn't tell a story. We are talking like a three-line poem here. And that's it. I wrestled Lance Storm for one minute and eight seconds in Madison Square Garden. And we had to get a run-in. I had to get laid out by I think, laid out by Christian and the end of it. A minute and eight seconds. Do we even lock up? I don't even… What do we do with that? We made it work,'” Adam Copeland told Sam Roberts via WrestleZone.
“But if you're looking for quality over necessarily, maybe quantity, and the wrestling is by far better now. But the characters were I think what the great part of the Attitude Era was. And I've said this, you could have Crash Holly come out first. Massive reaction. And from top to bottom on that lineup, everyone had an established character. Even if you're just trying to figure it out. Even if you're stumbling through, you're still something. And I feel like somewhere around the way because owners got put so much on the wrestling, the character side of things got a little bit lost. So now, you can get all those, they're all great matches. Everybody's trying to have Match of the Year. But do I care about them as much? Because I'm not invested in the person who's doing the moves. And that to me was one of the biggest learning curves I had to understand. Like, ‘Okay, when they care about the character, they'll care even more about what moves you do.'
“And you don't have to do a Spear off the top of a ladder. And if you do, you can save it for Main Event in Toronto against John Cena in a TLC match for the Heavyweight Championship. If I'm going to Spear Mick Foley through a flaming table with Thumbtacks in my back, it's going to be WrestleMania. That was along the time when I realized, ‘Okay if I'm going to do it, I'm going to mean something. I'm going to make sure it's something that's replayed forever.”
Is Copeland correct? Did the Attitude Era really have too many nothing matches for its own good, with storylines taking center stage over traditional in-ring action outside of Pay-Per-Views and special occasions? Yes, when discussing that era of wrestling history, fans more often recall the big moments and ridiculous storylines instead of entire matches. Still, there's a reason why that era is romanticized all these years later: Because, to many fans, that is professional wrestling television.
Adam Copeland explains his comments on “Freedom” from WWE.
Elsewhere on his promotional tour, this time in an appearance on Busted Open Radio, Adam Copeland discussed his comments about feeling “free” from WWE now that he's in AEW – comments that some fans felt were an attack directed at his former employer.
Despite enjoying his current work in AEW, Copeland remains a huge supporter of WWE and enjoyed his time in the company.
“‘Freedom' is a good word, but that makes it feel like I was jailed with WWE and I never felt that way. I want everyone to understand that I loved it there [in WWE], but I also understood that it was going to be more of the same, and creatively, I don't know how much fun that would have been,” Adam Copeland said via Wrestling Inc. “This gig has just always been fun. And when I finally made the decision, I sat down with kind of the three decisions in front of me, the three paths. When I finally committed to the path that was AEW, that's when I went, ‘Oh, wow, okay.' But even then, not until truly getting there and getting a feel for the place and understanding, ‘Oh, okay, I'm going to be afforded even more freedom than I was afforded in WWE,' which, I was afforded a lot of freedom, but there's still a lot of layers to answer to.”
Say what you will about Copeland's newfound run in AEW, about how it compares to his final run in WWE post-Judgment Day, and how both compare to his glory days as the “Rated-R Superstar,” but it's clear he's proud of his in-ring career as a whole, especially considering it almost ended for good a decade earlier due to a forced retirement. Considering everything he went through to get to Daily's Place, this current run is just icing on top of his celebratory cake.