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What would Edge be without The Judgment Day? Well, fans will find out soon enough, as with Edge inching closer and closer to the end of his story with Finn Balor at WrestleMania 39, “The Rated-R Superstar” stopped by After The Bell with Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick to discuss the faction he started almost a year ago and developed into something that has far exceeded his initial expectation.
“It's turned into something entirely different, and better, quite honestly,” Edge said via Fightful. “Where it's at now is the goal I had in mind. I really thought the concept of The Judgment Day, the idea behind it was, ‘here are these talented individuals who I truly felt weren't getting the opportunity that they deserved, and if they got that opportunity, they could fly with it.' I had been watching them all since NXT and kind of kept tabs on them and kept my eye on them all these years. 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.”
Asked how he thought things would have turned out had he remained in charge of The Judgment Day, Edge admits that the team may have eventually broken up, with the other members turning on “The Rated-R Superstar,” but the story as a whole would have been far more focused on himself instead of his faction mates.
“I honestly thought we would maybe get to this part of the story, now,” Edge said. “You have to make due and figure it out. Thankfully, they were given the reigns to take this in a different direction, an entirely different direction than it would have with Edge at the helm 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 of this character, they know the real life story, they know Adam's story, so it's like, ‘We don't want to hate this guy because he fought back for something that he wanted back. He's also doing something that no one has ever done before. He's wrestling with a triple fusion in his neck.' No one has ever done that. It can be hard to hate that. I was trying. I was trying every old school heel trick in the book. It just wasn't going to work. It might have, eventually, with more time, but it would have taken a lot more work. Thankfully, all four of them, with the addition of Dom, have taken this thing in completely different directions. They're more themselves, and when you can be more yourself, chances are it's going to work because you're going to inject the actual person behind the character with some reality, truths, and actual interests in a way you would actually speak.”
With Balor and Edge officially agreeing to a Hell in a Cell match at WrestleMania 39 – one that may or may not feature the return of The Demon – it's clear The Judgment Day is rapidly approaching an inflection point heading into April. What that group looks like in the future, however, remains to be seen.
Edge has more he wants to do in WWE than feud with The Judgment Day.
Elsewhere in his intervew with Patrick and Graves, Edge was asked what he still wants to do in WWE and let it be known that, after wrestling without fans during the pandemic and then immediately heading into The Judgment Day storyline, he's ready to move forward once and for all.
“I think, when I look at the totality of since I’ve come back, I came back at the Royal Rumble, had that experience that I’ll never forget,” Edge said via The Wrestle Zone. “Then, worldwide pandemic, and if I’m looking at it selfishly, about a year of my comeback was in front of no one, except for people watching at home. Bigger things, I get it. But just looking at it, I’m like, ‘Man, okay, a year of this has been in front of no audience. Now, a year of this comeback has been spent with Judgment Day, and it’s time to move past it.
“It’s time to get to the next step of what this comeback is. We’re four years into it now. I know the window’s closing, and it’s closing fast, so I gotta get done what I need to get done, and I can’t get it done while still in this blood feud with the Judgment Day. So it’s gotta end, and we gotta see it through to the climax, like any good movie, like any good story. It’s time to finish this, and that’s the plan Monday is to finish it.”
Fortunately for Edge, he laid out his play on Monday Night RAW and Balor accepted his Hell in a Cell challenge. Where the match goes from there, however, remains to be seen. After such an expansive feud, does it make more sense for Edge to win and go for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship right away? Or would it make mor se sense form him to lose, legitimize Balor once and for all, and then build things back up slowly but surely towards another big title shot? Fans will find out soon enough.
