Adam Copeland had an ending in mind when he arrived in AEW, but not so much anymore.
Copeland figured he'd spend roughly two years with the promotion before calling it a career. He foresaw a farewell at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, where a match between Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior convinced a young Copeland to dedicate his life to professional wrestling.
Two years have passed, and Copeland has the AEW world tag team championship wrapped around his waist. Instead of counting down the matches he has left, Copeland is thinking about the ones he still hasn't had.
"About 95% of the matches I want are still out there," Copeland told CBS Sports ahead of his tag team title defense at AEW Forbidden Door on Sunday. "Which is pretty cool."
The list is surprisingly long for a Hall of Famer. Will Ospreay, Samoa Joe, Swerve Strickland, Kyle Fletcher and "Hangman" Adam Page are all first-time matches to check off the list. There's also a tag team dream match against The Young Bucks. Beyond Christian Cage -- with whom he now shares the tag team titles -- and FTR, Copeland has only scratched the surface of what he came to AEW to do.
That has mostly to do with circumstance. Copeland has spent the last few years balancing two careers for the first time, splitting his schedule between wrestling and acting. Then he broke his leg at the 2024 AEW Double or Nothing after leaping off the top of the steel cage, sidelining him for seven months and extending his AEW contract.
"That's shifted and had to change," Copeland said of his retirement and contract timelines. "I broke my leg. That put me out for a bit. And then filming 'Beekeeper' and 'Percy Jackson [and the Olympians].'
"The amazing part here is that Tony [Khan] and I sit down and we map away to try and pull it all off, and he's understanding of that too, which is really nice to be able to juggle two careers, because I never did this before."
Those unexpected detours have changed how Copeland thinks about retirement. For someone who once believed a neck injury had ended his wrestling career forever, planning too far ahead isn't appealing. Copeland retired in 2011, at the height of his success, due to severe neck injuries. Everything since his 2020 return is a bonus.
Reuniting with Cage has also slowed down the clock. The lifelong friends captured the AEW tag team championships at this year's Double or Nothing, more than 25 years after they last held gold together. What started as one final run together has abundantly delivered one of the most enjoyable stretches of Copeland's AEW tenure.
"Sting came up to us last week. He goes, 'Guys, this is so much fun,'" Copeland said. "And I think because we're having fun, I think the audience can sense that legit chemistry. 'These guys have known each other, been best friends for over 40 years now.'"
That chemistry is a testament to their shared history. Copeland and Cage, both 52, met when they were 10. The two Canadians broke into wrestling together as teenagers. They've spent years winning championships and, occasionally, fighting each other.
"It's been fun to discover new things with this, because even during promos or pre-tapes and everything, where the other doesn't really know what the other's going to do, and I think that keeps us on our toes.
"We have a natural chemistry from being friends the entirety of our lives. You can't fake that. I know where he's going to be. He knows where I'm going to be."
The reunion has given Copeland's character room to evolve. Cage has reinvented himself as "The Patriarch," a manipulative surrogate father who's equal parts despicable and hilarious. Copeland, meanwhile, hasn't dramatically reinvented the "Rated-R Superstar."
"More than anything, it's just not really trying to recreate the wheel, because I tried that once with Judgment Day," Copeland said. "And I could just feel that the audience didn't want to see that. They didn't want to get with that."
Copeland founded The Judgment Day in 2022, a WWE faction with dark, high-society occult elements. He handpicked Rhea Ripley and Damian Priest for the group, despite claiming that Vince McMahon failed to see the value in Copeland's recruits.
"No hesitation," Copeland said. "Those are the two people who could make this a pretty cool group. He was kind of surprised by that, and that made me realize he didn't understand what he had in those two, and I thought that was a shame.
"I'm super proud of them. I'm proud of Rhea and where she's taken it and gone with it, and it's exactly where I thought it could go."
Copeland went to great lengths to separate "The Rated-R Superstar" from this darker version. He didn't stick the landing and was pushed out of the group after two months.
"I really changed everything on purpose, thinking, 'let's take away all the stuff that the audience relates to. Take it away from them. Hopefully, they'll hate this.' I think we were getting there, but it was going to be pulling teeth and swimming upstream."
Copeland had the epiphany that his comeback was too miraculous to ignore. Afforded time no one thought possible, Copeland is more focused on giving fans the beloved version of himself.
"I think a lot of that is just because the real story of getting this back and the surgeries and the work put into getting this back, I think, makes it hard not to appreciate it," Copeland said.
The version of Cope & Cage, formerly Edge & Christian, we're seeing now is closer than ever to their true identities.
"We're kind of like Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in 'Grumpy Old Men,' or Statler and Waldorf from 'The Muppets.' It's actually closer to our actual relationship," Copeland said. "I think that's why a lot of it really works.
"We've been through so many matches together... but this is a different version. I think that's been important. We've kind of flipped the tag team character dynamic on its head. We're both proud of that because it makes it different than what it was before."
Eventually, Copeland will stop wrestling. Unlike his retirement timeline, what life after looks like hasn't changed.
"What it looks like has always been the same," Copeland said. "I will go to the lake, sail my boat, drag the kids behind me on the little floating couch, and sit in the mountains. And, you know, do occasional acting gigs. That's pretty much the extent of it -- just be a dad and husband."
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