2012 WWE Hall of Fame inductee Edge (Adam Copeland) spoke with the Busted Open Radio Show about his induction, his neck injury, Vickie Guerrero’s success in WWE and The Rock vs. John Cena at WrestleMania 28:
Edge on being inducted into the Hall of Fame: “It’s kind of surreal. I was kind of expecting to be like ok in a few years or like you said if it’s in Toronto, or Vancouver, or Montreal. I was fully expecting that too. I got the phone call and I was like “this year? Really?” Ok, I’m not going to turn it down. It’s an honor. It’s humbling, it really is. I didn’t expect it. Number one, last year performing on it, had a year left on my deal, I thought this was the year I was going to retire. So it really sped the process up a year. If you had asked me when I was seventeen just breaking into the business, ‘Okay, you’re going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year as the Four Horsemen, at the age of thirty-eight.’ It’s pretty surreal.”
Edge on Vickie Guerrero’s success in WWE: “I feel like a proud papa because when we first started doing our thing she was this timid general manager who wore a business suit and it really brought her out of her shell. She said I helped her along with that process. She kind of fed off my sleaziness on the screen. It was fun to watch this raging beast grow into the “excuse me” phenomenon that it became. Man we would get out there and I couldn’t hear her talk because it would be so loud and inside I would be like “Good for you Vick, this is awesome, I created a monster.” I was like Dr Frankenstein watching the Bride of Frankenstein come off the bed.
Edge on John Cena and The Rock at WrestleMania 28: “The worst thing is apathy and there is definitely not that. So I think a lot of it too, is John is kind of handcuffed. It’s like there needs to be that guy and he is that guy. So it’s like you want me to be this guy, then I’m going to be that guy and I’m going to do it with total commitment and do it, and if you don’t like it then that’s what I got to do. I think that’s where it’s kind of at. I think there is a lot more riding on it than just half the crowd in Portland reacting a certain way. You have to look at it from Vince’s (McMahon) perspective, which no one seems to do anymore. Whether it’s guys sweating Rock coming back. I’m like are you kidding me? It’s great. I think it’s awesome. If you get bumped off WrestleMania because of The Rock, guess what? You weren’t good enough. It’s up to you to stay on the show.
Edge on when he knew about the neck injury heading into WrestleMania 27: “I had no idea WrestleMania last year was going to be my last match. We really assumed it was going to be possibly this year that I would be retiring. Going forward I was like we will figure this out, we will get it to Del Rio and do it in the ladder match and then maybe I will take a couple of months break, let everything rest up, come back and finish up. It didn’t end up that way. We got additional MRI’s the Monday after and they went ‘Whoa! You got no choice in the matter here. We’re shutting you down.’ When they told me what the MRI’s look like, the doctor was like “this is the worst neck X-Ray currently competing in contact sports. You are done.” But we didn’t know that and thankfully we caught it. I don’t know when it started, obviously it’s a gradual process, but I had neck surgery in ’03, so if I really wanted to call it a day, I guess that could have been it. But I still had too much to do and I wanted to get it done. So I can look back without any regrets.”
