Edge says he’s not trying to mislead anyone with his WWE comeback run, and he’s trying to tell real stories and show how each match could be his last.
Edge was the guest on the premiere episode of FOX Sports’ new podcast, Out of Character with Ryan Satin, and spoke about the character he’s portraying in his current WWE run. Explaining that this version of himself is more ‘Adam’ than before, Edge wants to show how an aging athlete could be hurt by a good strike or move, and explained the story he tried to tell in his March 19 SmackDown match against Jey Uso.
“I think more than anything in what I want to tell by coming back, is simple stories. ‘OK, this guy is in the twilight of his career’ so an elbow to the ribs from a cross-faced chicken wing, you catch somebody in the right spot,” Edge explained, “it can drop you. So to me, why not try and tell a story that everyone can understand? And that was really the story of the match [against Jey Uso]. He went after my ribs and I went after his shoulder and that was it, but it was a lot of fun, it really was.”
“And still, [I’d want to] get in there and try the top rope hurricanranas and things like that once in a while, just make sure that there’s still dollops of that in there, but I’m just realizing too, recovery after a match now takes a lot longer than it used to,” Edge said. “I’m completely transparent with that aspect too. Sometimes I think we get desensitized to ‘Oh, well, that’s what they do’ and ‘It must be easy!’ It was never easy, but it’s even harder at this stage of the game. Again, it’s part of the challenge and I get off on challenges.”
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When asked about the art of selling moves as being more painful than it actually is, Edge said it’s something he keeps in mind and it’s a practice that should happen more often that not. Pointing out that some moves actually hurt, he says the Edge people see on TV is older and wiser, but could be taken down with a good shot and that’s the story he tries to tell in the ring now.
“I think I have to, it’d be silly not to. Like I see someone take a German suplex and come up fired up. I don’t get that because German suplexes hurt, so why would we desensitize the audience into thinking they don’t? They suck, so sell it like they suck. I’m just trying to get mileage and show that. Say you watch UFC and a dude gets a liver shot, there’s that delayed reaction. With Jey,” Edge noted, “that’s what I was trying to get across, like ‘maybe he just cracked a rib’. That’s not out of the realm of possibility, like it could happen, especially with where I’m at in my career, and really just tell those kinds of stories where you’re fighting from behind, fighting from underneath and you’re trying to just get this thing done and you might not always get it done, but you’re always going to try and show that effort.”
“I think that’s really what this whole run of Edge boils down to is, just not trying to [give] any kind of false misconceptions of what this is. I know what this is. Every time you see me in there, it could be the last time you see me in there, and I know that,” Edge explained, “and I also know what I went through to get back to do this, and it wasn’t easy. The prep for each match is not easy and the fallout from each match is not easy, I’m not going to lie about that, it’s true.”
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