During his two decades plus in WWE, Adam Copeland was involved in dozens and dozens of different storylines as Edge, some of them all-time greats worthy of being immortalized forever in the annals of professional wrestling history, and others, like his feud with Matt Hardy after Team Extreme's valet, Lita, cheated on “Version 1” with the “Rated-R Superstar,” that are more infamous than famous nearly two decades later.

Discussing this storyline, which borderline had to be addressed on television because it was very well known among fans across the world on Not Sam Wrestling, Copeland asserted that, with the value of hindsight, he wishes the situation had been addressed sooner, as things could have been handled so much better.

“It was pretty quickly. I wanted to get into it sooner than we did. Just face it head on and let's go,” Adam Copeland said via 411 Mania. “We eventually got there when they brought Matt back and I was like, ‘Okay, here we go.' Now, at least, all under the same roof, now we can get to work on trying to make something from this because it's already out in the ether anyway. So let's use it and in a perfect world, we get it put behind us and in a perfect world we're all in a better place, at least professionally, after the fact. At that point, that's the only positive I could think to pull out of it. ‘Okay, I f**ked up, now what do I do?' That was really the first instance, lousy way to get there, but I feel like that's almost when I stepped into manhood. When I fully went, ‘I have to be not a kid anymore, I'm on the road and having fun. Now there are bigger things and I have to face them.'”

Did WWE handle the situation well when they eventually got around to it? Eh, not really; Hardy's career certainly took a hit and he never quite became a solo star until a decade later when he unleashed “Broken Matt” on the professional wrestling world. Still, nearly 20 years into the future, the duo are both members of AEW and have since buried the hatchet, which is a pretty big accomplishment for both men.

Adam Copeland contrasts working for TK, Triple H, and Mr. McMahon.

Elsewhere in his appearance on Not Sam Wrestling, Adam Copeland addressed what it's been like to only really work under three different creative leads over his professional wrestling career, Vince McMahon, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, and Tony Khan, but how the three men differ in their approach to professional wrestling.

While Copeland clearly still holds WWE in high regard, he appreciates the freedom TK has given him as a storyteller, as such an opportunity is borderline non-existent in WWE.

“Paul and Tony are fans, and I think Vince is to a degree, but he looks at it from more of the business and more of the global thing, but at the heart of this thing, you know, Hunter was a fan, and Tony was a fan. So I think they come at it from that mindset. I think that might be the difference maybe,” Adam Copeland explained via WrestleTalk.

“I think the biggest difference I'd have to say I noticed between the two companies is that with WWE now, it's a publicly traded company, there's the sponsors, there's a lot of different things to answer to, and with AEW there's just a lot of freedom. (You can't be running around saying, go f**k yourself on WWE TV.) Not gonna happen, right?

“So in that regard, especially in this final act of my career, that's a super fun place to navigate from. That's a great place to create from because, oh right, let's just throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. If it doesn't, okay, well, it didn't, and then let's try this, and let's try that, and then, like I said, have a complete roster of people that I've never touched, like I've never wrestled Samoa Joe.”

Whoa, Copeland versus Samoa Joe? Is the “Rated-R Superstar” about to leave his feud with Christian Cage in the past to go after the top belt in AEW, the AEW World Championship? Well, technically, he did win the TNT Championship at Worlds End, even if it was for about 90 seconds, so that would be the logical outcome from a purely logistical standpoint. Either way, the fact that Copeland has all of these new options at his disposal instead of, say, an eighth match with Finn Balor is a pretty incredible thing at this point in his career, even if he's largely just wrestled his oldest rival, Cage, so far in AEW.