Now seems like a good time to eulogize his big heel run, since the Undertaker chokeslammed him to hell and he presumably suffered a painful kayfabe death. Give the Undertaker one thing; when he wants to blow off a feud, he doesn’t mess around.
Edge. It’s hard to believe that the grinning goofball who hung out with Christian became the biggest heel in the business, isn’t it? Hell, it’s hard to believe Christian’s become the performer he has since their break up, too. Especially since WWE desperately wanted Edge to be over as a face.
It worked okay on Smackdown, during the halcyon days of the Smackdown Six, mainly because with Heyman’s booking, he and tag partner Rey Mysterio were the only real straight babyfaces on the show. But he got a rub from a short tag run with Hulk Hogan and had awesome matches with Angle and Eddie Guerrero, so everything seemed to be going along swimmingly. This was all in 2002. 2003 was wide open for him to really take the ball and run with it. He’d had solid matches with Brock Lesnar as an underdog babyface, so that very well could have led to him being the guy to take the strap off of Brocknar for good and not Eddie, had about 7 trillion things turned out differently.
But then he got hurt before No Way Out and sat out a year, missing two Wrestlemanias in the process. The next time we saw him was on RAW, during the draft of ought four, spearing Eric Bischoff for a nice pop. They positioned him there as Chris Benoit’s ally against Evolution, making them tag champs for a short stretch and setting him up as a babyface challenger for Randy Orton’s IC Title. They also kept trying to set up a run against HHH.
That failed miserably, mainly because Edge was terrible with a live mic in that role. So much so that the crowd turned on him during his run against Orton. That Orton got enough heel pops to effectively become a face is also bizarre, really. Their match at Vengeance ’04 is interesting based in large part on that. It also made their Rated RKO run interesting people with longer memories than WWE credits its audience. Not that I’m continuity obsessive, but I’ll save that for another date.
So, Edge flopped as a face. After he relieved young Randal of his IC Strap, they set up a face vs. face feud between he and Jericho, doing a whole “Who will turn on whom?” shades of gray thing. It was cool, much like when Jericho did it with Rock in 2001.
But then Edge got hurt again, keeping him out for a month. By the time he came back, they decided to just pull the trigger and turn him heel by making him a righteously angry heel. He was bitter, but felt (and kind of was) justified by being screwed over, and took it out on fan favorites like Shawn Michaels and Benoit. So he got some heat there. Unfortunately, he veered a little too much towards being a whiny heel, much like his countryman Bret Hart, for my tastes and many others. So, it was hard to really buy in to him as a future main eventer, even if he was one of those guys you just knew they were going to try with anyway due to how much work they put in to him.
Money In the Bank took care of the who, what, where, when, how, and why there. It really was a just add water, main eventer thing for him. Well, that and screwing Matt Hardy’s girlfriend behind his back. I’m not fixating on that for a billion reasons, from how chewed over it is to how it took HHH hooking up with Stephanie on screen and in real life to cement his spot (well, that and nearly killing Mick Foley a couple times; that’s a right of passage Mick is denying future WWE main eventers by going to TNA, where he will probably just become Eric Young’s beflanneled pal or something), to the fact that they were consenting adults and Matt was a whinny wuss about the whole thing. But it was a big part of what got him over, can’t totally gloss over that.
What really put him over the hump, I think, was tapping in to his inner jerk to a sensational degree. I initially dismissed segments like this, but just shooting on people viciously is what really legitimized him as a heel to me. The fact that he’s become the guy who will say anything to get a negative reaction, to just spew bile at anybody, is what’s made him such a compelling performer.
So, he’s come a long way, and all he had to do is become the one guy no one will cheer for in a WWE where virtuous babyfaces like John Cena can be booed and vicious heels like HHH can be turned face despite being completely unsympathetic for years on end. Sure, he’s also raised his game in the ring, but not to a huge degree. He was always a solid worker, and was having excellent singles matches with everyone from Angle to Lance Storm from the time he and Christian stopped being a team.
Just to make sure I’m not overrating him, it’s not like he’s ever had a classic straight match with any of the guys he’s feuded with over world titles; his best match with Cena (and Flair) was a TLC brawl, he and Batista never really got out of *** range, his best match with Undertaker was Hell in a Cell at Summerslam, although I personally liked their matches at ‘Mania and Backlash more than any of the other matches I’ve mentioned there. His feud with Rey never went anywhere other than placeholder status, even though Rey’s arm injury didn’t help. So there’s that to ponder.
It was by becoming a completely odious human being on WWE programming that he really got over the hump and became a top guy, so more power to him there. Here’s hoping he can keep up this hot streak he’s been on after he recovers from being roasted under the ring at Summerslam.
