Original subtitles

[soft dramatic music]

- [sighs]

♪ ♪

Wwe superstars are part gypsy,

Part circus... [crowd cheering]

Part actor, part writer,

Part athlete.

Wrestling is all of that thrown into one pot,

Mixed up, and you burp out a wrestler.

Colorful outfits,

High flying...

- For the love of god!

He may be broken.

- Explosions.

It's theater in the round.

It's live.

You have no net.

You've got a live microphone and a camera.

You have no idea the pain that I have gone through.

Those are your tools to tell your story.

- This is hell on earth. - How in god's name

Can a human being even move after that?

- Oh, no, it's unbelievable.

- That, to me, is just so fascinating.

♪ ♪

It's the best gig in the world.

♪ ♪

- Look out!

- When he was a kid, he wanted to be a wrestler.

He lived his whole life wanting to be a wrestler.

- Downward spiral from the ladder.

- The way he could've happened and all the adversity

That he's had to go through. - Oh, man.

- Carnage-- - there was still the knock

On edge that he wasn't tough.

- Oh, my god!

Edge from the 20-foot ladder!

- He was never the biggest, never the strongest,

Never the fastest.

- He forced himself and pushed himself and willed himself.

- He was someone that was willing to risk it all...

- Oh, my god!

- To entertain the people who paid money to see him wrestle.

- Whatever he wants to get, he's gonna manifest.

- I don't know if I've ever witnessed a wrestlemania

Moment like we just saw.

- When it comes to do or die situations, I thrive.

- I was shocked that he had to end

His career before his time.

[cheers and applause]

- There's gonna be uneasiness that

Is never going to go away.

- Edge has shocked the world.

- The impossible. He did the impossible.

- The ultimate opportunist.

- The rated-r superstar, edge!

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- Growing up in orangeville, I was a shy kid,

Which seems counterintuitive

To what I ended up doing for a living.

But I was a pretty quiet kid and pretty well-behaved.

I--it was just me and my mom,

And she worked multiple jobs to--

To make sure that, you know,

I had enough food

'cause I ate a lot.

♪ ♪

- She was a single parent.

She was raising adam, and she had several jobs at once.

And she would do whatever it took to raise adam

The right way, I guess.

♪ ♪

Orangeville's a pretty, uh--

It's not the funnest town,

But it's a safe place.

It's probably what you'd call a good place to raise a family.

Not a whole lot going on usually.

Here's another place where adam and judy lived.

Adam and judy, they moved around

Probably, boy, about half a dozen times at least

Over the years.

They lived once downtown, then they lived in the place

I just showed you.

There are a couple more places all around there.

♪ ♪

- There was this back alley to the back of our apartment

And it was these rickety old stairs.

I would try and sneak down this back alley

So no one would see where I lived

Because I thought, ah, if there's anybody

Driving by they'll go, "what's adam doing there?

Does he live up there?"

You go through those times and those periods

Where you're self-conscious, you're shy.

And some of that can be because of finances,

Or you're the poor kid

Or you're the kid that's gotta wear

The same shoes for a while.

I'm sure my mom probably sensed that,

Which probably was not an easy thing for her.

But she did everything that she possibly could.

♪ ♪

- Judy worked two jobs sometimes,

You know, making ends meet.

She did--she was an amazing mother.

She did a wonderful, wonderful job

Just to keep a roof over adam's head.

- We kinda lived paycheck to paycheck.

And I remember there was this thing called the baby bonus.

I think it was like 35 bucks a month.

I'd go down the stairs,

And I'd always look in that mailbox

To see if that envelope was there,

'cause I knew that 35 bucks was really gonna help.

That was the difference between that final week

Being pretty lean or we're gonna have a casserole.

♪ ♪

Definitely some stress, but you're a kid, right?

So it kind of bounces off of you.

And maybe on deeper layers, deeper levels,

It is helping to form the person you're going to become,

But you don't realize that at the time.

- She was everything to adam and vice versa.

Adam was her life, period.

- It kinda felt like her and I against the world.

She just put her nose to the grindstone.

And what she taught me was work ethic.

Nothing will come easy.

If it's something that you want,

If it's something that you truly want to attain,

There's gonna be work involved.

And the reward will be worth it.

I can look back now,

And I think her reward was my success.

♪ ♪

- He got a lot of love.

And that--you know, when you're a little kid

And you don't have much, that means everything.

- He definitely had a lot of male presence in his life

To kind of make up for the fact

That his father wasn't around.

But I'm sure he had doubts

And thoughts and, you know,

Ran the gamut of emotions

As to why his father wasn't in his life.

- My grandparents were there, all my uncles were there,

My aunts were there.

There was always someone.

And they all pitched in, and they all, you know,

Lent their hands to making sure that

You know, if my mom had to work,

There was gonna be somebody there.

- Him and gary were really close.

- He was the baby of the family.

He was the closest to me in age.

And because of that, he was my uncle,

But it was more of

A big brother feel, you know?

Because we could relate to a lot of the same things.

- He was into hockey big time.

♪ ♪

- While I may have annoyed my older uncles,

I didn't annoy gary because we were

Into similar things still.

We would draw together and we'd sit there

And compare like our drawings of goalies

And things like that.

- When he wasn't playing hockey with his friends,

He was always with adam.

Always.

And then all of a sudden, that was taken away from him.

[somber tone]

♪ ♪

I was out west in western canada working,

And all I got was a phone call saying,

"you better get home, and you better get home now.

Gary's been in an accident."

- My uncle gary and a bunch of friends

Were driving home from a lacrosse game

And lost control around a wet corner.

And, um--yeah.

Yeah, he was in the backseat and didn't make it.

♪ ♪

It turned the entire family upside down.

♪ ♪

He was the baby.

This is my best buddy.

At that age, old people passed away.

It didn't dawn on me that you could be 17.

- You know, gary was kinda like the anchor.

When that anchor was taken away,

You kinda just drift, right?

♪ ♪

You can never replace that, ever.

♪ ♪

You say time heals all, but it doesn't.

You just learn to live with the scars, you know?

Just a big, big void.

♪ ♪

- I know my grandparents never recovered.

And I--I truly don't think

Any of the brothers and sisters did, either.

♪ ♪

And for me, I was young enough that I started looking

And I found wrestling.

♪ ♪

It was all of those things that I gravitated to

As a kid, but now it was tangible.

Now, wait, these guys and girls

Are gonna be down at maple leaf gardens?

Or they may come to the orangeville arena?

It became the friend that my uncle was,

And now that friend wasn't there...

- Not make the blow effective.

- Wrestling became that thing for me.

- Jam-packed crowd here at toronto's maple leaf gardens

For this fantastic event.

- Introducing first, the number one frenchman,

Rene goulet.

♪ ♪

[all cheering]

- My uncle randy, my mom,

My aunt sandy and I,

We all went down to maple leaf gardens.

This was my first trip to maple leaf gardens.

♪ ♪

I just remember the ring and the single light above it

And this giant wooden ramp that came up

From out of the dressing room.

So maple leaf gardens was the only one that had this ramp.

I just remember thinking, these people are humongous,

Bigger than life, brighter than life.

It was mind melting.

- Oh! - Oh!

Cannon ball off the top turnbuckle,

Down for the cover.

He got him. [bell dings]

- I don't know what part of my brain fired that said,

"this is what you're gonna do."

And I don't know why, but it did.

♪ ♪

- This is orangeville district secondary school.

There's a lobby in there, and that's where adam and jay

Used to practice their wrestling.

There's a set of stairs that comes down.

They used to pretend they were jumping off the top rope.

[upbeat piano music]

- I was 11 years old when I moved to orangeville.

I was a really shy kid.

When my mom pulled up to the--to the school,

I refused to get out of the car.

- He was nervous,

And the teacher sent me out as one of the kids

To try and ease him into this thing.

You know, talk him into the school to--

To tell him it's gonna be ok.

We started talking about wrestling.

And he was as avid about it as I was.

- We kinda had our own, like, federations going on,

So we'd always kind of update each other

Who was the champion, with our action figures

And all those sorts of things.

My family took him in,

And he was with us a lot, you know, for dinners.

He went on family trips with us,

And kind of becoming a part of my family,

We just started talking about it.

And it wasn't like,

"if we do this, if we become wrestlers."

It was like, "when we do this.

"when we become a tag team.

When we become tag team champions."

We kinda manifested it at a early age

That this was something we were going to do.

♪ ♪

- And that was it.

Like, all bets were off at that point.

I took this very seriously.

And this was it.

There was no plan b.

Failure was not an option.

- We're 65,000 strong here at toronto skydome

For what will be the greatest wrestling

Extravaganza of all time.

- So wrestlemania vi was coming to the skydome.

It was everywhere.

I thought, there was no way

That I'm gonna end up going.

In the meantime, my mom

And my grandparents

Were doing what they could

To get me down there.

We didn't have a credit card, so my mom

Used my grandparents' credit card

And then paid them back in order to get me down there.

And then we took the bus down,

And it was a voyage. [laughs]

- When you step in the skydome,

When you feel the energy that's gonna run wild

Throughout the arena, those are my people.

That's my energy, brother.

- It was going to be hulk hogan against the ultimate warrior.

Now as a fan in that time, you had a clear side.

You were hogan or you were warrior.

I was hogan.

♪ ♪

I'll never forget, like,

It's still burned into my memory.

Hulkster is almost motionless.

Two. - One, two--no!

[cheering]

- Like, how far we were

And the angle we were at

And how cool it all was to me.

Sure enough, there I am in my hulk rules tank top

Already about a head taller than everybody else

In the audience.

My mom down at my shoulder.

The mullet, stupid smile on my face.

Like, I just won the super bowl.

[rock music]

- Jay youngblood, dino bravo,

The dean of wrestling johnny weaver,

All the top stars are coming

In from all over the country.

- Toronto was maybe the hottest market

In the world of wrestling.

♪ ♪

Just growing up in that environment

Had a big say in adam's whole development as a wrestler.

- In toronto, wrestling becomes so popular,

The sports editors at those papers,

They said, "you know what?

"when we run anything about wrestling,

"our paid number for that day goes up.

What about a weekly wrestling column?"

♪ ♪

- One weekend, in the column at the very tail end of it,

"wanna be a wrestler?

"write in, there's gonna be an essay contest.

"the winner of this essay contest

"will receive free wrestling training

From sweet daddy siki and ron hutchison."

Ok, I know these-- these names.

I know these guys.

This is legit.

I'm writing in.

I wrote it longhand, sent it.

That was the only copy.

I've never seen it to this day.

- And this is the letter.

This is the original letter.

Let's open it up here.

- Part of me is dreading what I might have written.

[laughs] but whatever I wrote worked

'cause we're sitting here now.

And a lot of it starts with that essay.

♪ ♪

- "dear mr. Sullivan, I am writing in response

"to norm da costa's column.

"I feel I could possibly be a good choice.

"I've been a wrestling fanatic since I was

"about eight years old.

"I stand 6'4", 224 pounds, and I'm 18 years old.

Sincerely, adam copeland."

- It changed everything for me.

But I also knew because they were taking this chance on me

That I wanted to do right by that chance.

If I didn't see it to as far as I could see it

And work as hard as I could toward it,

The chance they gave me,

I'm just [bleep] on it.

And I'm not gonna do that.

♪ ♪

- He didn't have a car at the time,

So I actually borrowed my mom's car

And drove him to his first wrestling class.

And I would do that quite often on weekends

Until he got a car.

- I loved every inch of that place.

Finally, after, you know, about six or seven months

Of falling on the floor,

I was given the nod to get in the ring.

And finally getting in there and being in there and landing

In there for the first time was a real eye-opener.

I don't know why I thought that might be easy.

[chuckles] and I was really, really [bleep] wrong.

Luckily, my brain was ok with that.

I don't know why. [laughs]

I don't have the answer as to why.

♪ ♪

[body slamming]

All right.

[sighs]

What we're about to watch here

Is my very first experience

Wrestling in front of an audience.

- First, from orangeville, ontario,

He stands 6'5" inches tall,

He weighs 218 pounds,

This is adam copeland!

[cheering]

- Look at that young fella over there

In the corner in the oakland raiders zubaz,

Lightning bolts all over the place,

Fantabulous mullet on full display.

Monarch park, toronto,

July 1, canada day.

Ron hutchison, sweet daddy siki,

Our trainers, ran a wrestling show

For free in the park

To get us some reps in front of an audience.

[crowd chanting] adam! Adam! Adam!

I just remember getting chopped a lot,

Which is kind of a rite of passage for the newbie.

So I'm like, eh, I don't care if I'm a rookie.

I'm gonna chop you back.

Yeah, that's right, frank. Eat that.

Now I'm just chopping everybody.

[laughs]

I always had a bit of an attitude, I guess.

- [shouts]

- I just remember thinking,

Yep, this is exactly where I need to be.

This is the right spot.

♪ ♪

So this went a long way to making me realize that, ok, I--

I'm on the right track, at least.

There is no safety net. There is no failsafe.

It was this and nothing else.

You gotta bet on yourself,

And you gotta believe you can do it.

[upbeat music]

- I've been training for about a year,

Year and a half.

"the dini petty show" in canada,

It was a talk show, and it was really big in canada.

Bret was gonna be a guest.

- Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome canada's own,

Bret "the hitman" hart!

[cheers and applause]

- So I said, "I gotta get there.

"I gotta get in that audience.

I'm gonna ask him a question."

- We got two guys here looked to me like they might be

Wrestlers in training here, huh, by the--

By the sheer size of you two.

You wanna be wrestlers?

- We're just wondering, like, how we should go about it.

And we work at siki's gym, so if you ever wanna stop by,

There's little plug there. [laughter]

- Well, when you wanna get in, do you have to go

And audition for them and meet them?

I mean, how did you get in?

- You have to have some experience and then--

Which is very hard to get nowadays.

And they can get you on television

And give you sort of a tryout, but that's about it.

[rock music]

In those days, it was hard to get someone

To help open a door for you.

And here I was, I think I was world champion at the time,

And I was like, how can I open a door for a guy at his age

Where he is and at his level?

[cheers and applause]

- After the show, I'm coming out of the bathroom,

And bret sees me and comes walking down the hall.

And he said, "listen, man, I wish I had more to tell you.

"I wish I had better advice.

Just stick with it."

♪ ♪

Bret hart just told me to stick with it.

Damn right, I'm sticking with it.

♪ ♪

- I had already been going to humber college for a year.

And adam decided to do

A radio broadcasting course

To kinda have something

To fall back on if, you know,

Wrestling doesn't pan out.

- I wanted to take something

In college while I was just

Getting sporadic bookings.

I, uh, decided maybe radio broadcasting

Would help to have to kind of perform verbally.

Tune in to cbc this Sunday at 8:00.

I'm adam jericho with your char news update.

I had a great couple years, and I was still wrestling.

And it was--you know, I wasn't making any money,

But I was making enough to get by.

- We just had a discussion, he's like,

"hey, man, you keep saying you're gonna do this.

Are we gonna--are you gonna do it or what?"

And I was like, "yeah, I am."

And so I was broke-- flat broke,

But I had a student loan from college.

- So he took part of his student loan

And put it toward training.

So now we're training at the same school.

And then slowly but surely, starting to break into

These different pockets of the independent scene.

- He stands 6'5", weighs 227 pounds,

From orangeville, ontario,

Adam copeland!

♪ ♪

- I had done a tiny show in ajax, ontario.

And no matter what, we always tried to put on the best match

We possibly could, which meant

I'm gonna be out there for half an hour

'cause I'm gonna use every second of this time

To either get somebody to notice or just improve.

- Sexton hardcastle opens up.

- There's probably 100 people there.

Do a tag team match.

- They seem to be playing a good mind game.

- This guy, carl de marco,

Who at that point is bret hart's manager,

Says, "hey, you guys got something.

Get me a tape."

- I wanted to build him similar to what we did with bret.

And I talked to adam and I said,

"I see you going down the exact same footsteps."

- Bret hart gets the victory.

- Look at this. Hardcastle with the powerbomb.

- I said, "adam, you've gotta trust me.

"you're not there yet, but you're close.

"I want you to do some more independent shows

"to hone your craft.

We're gonna be keeping in touch."

- Adam copeland!

- So they came to winnipeg.

And from there, we went

Through the norton tours.

♪ ♪

- There's a lot of tours where, man,

You drive across these lakes

And they wouldn't be all the way frozen.

- Some of the guys

On those type of trips, they break out.

They start crying because they figure they're gonna die.

You know, they've never been in--

Crossing lakes when you're driving, right?

And sometimes the water breaks

And they figure that they're dead.

♪ ♪

- The video camera-- - it's the I had to do it

On water tour. - The on water tour.

The hell or high water tour.

- As you can see, we're on a lake somewhere.

That was why they started being called death tours.

♪ ♪

You find yourselves in these conditions.

Like, we got up to oxford house

And they said, "it's -72 out.

"you gotta run inside 'cause you don't wanna

Be exposed for this long or it's frostbite."

[laughs] and I just remember

Getting out of that van and my nostrils freezing together.

We would get wherever we could to try and wrestle new people.

So jay and I took this trip--

And I still blame him for this,

It's all his fault--

He had got in contact with

This promoter from tennessee.

And this promoter promised us

30 shows in 30 days.

♪ ♪

So we get to tennessee, and we realize

There's no shows.

And we've used all of our money to get this far.

- We'd just try to walk onto shows.

And we ended up walking onto all these different shows.

We did a couple shows in a barn

In front of, like, eight people.

Fans sitting on hay bales.

- That was one of the instances where I had to--

To call home and say,

"can you wire me enough money for a bus ticket home?"

I knew she didn't have it 'cause at this point,

We're living in a one-room apartment.

You know, my mattress is on the floor in this corner,

Her mattress is over there.

I don't know if she asked my grandparents

Or scraped it together, but it got there.

And that's what got me home.

♪ ♪

Yeah, you're not making any money, and yeah,

Maybe 75 bucks a show, hopefully.

But you're still out there doing it.

My mom never questioned that.

She never said to me, "what do you think?

"is it time to call it a day?

Maybe move on to something else?"

She never said it once. And I never said it.

You know, I'd be working in the car seat factory and I'd go,

Ok, I'm doing this that I can afford tights.

So I can afford those boots.

So I can afford the first payment of car insurance.

Because I thought if I keep putting

Into this thing, eventually--

Eventually it'll pay off.

- We had tunnel vision.

We were gonna make it regardless.

And he had the same mindset, and I had the same mindset,

And we pushed each other.

♪ ♪

- Carl calls me, and said,

"you should get out to bret's."

Bret hart, who is the wwe champion at that point.

- Every now and then, I finally would step in the ring

And I'd go, ok, I'm gonna wrestle adam.

And I would try to teach him everything I could

In as short a way and quick a way as possible.

And basically give them the experience

Of working with the best wrestler

In the world right now.

- So I just get in and do my thing.

At the end of that, bret goes,

"whoo-wee, we gotta get you going."

You know, "I think you're ready.

You've gone as far as you can go to this point."

- Coming off the top. Can't believe this.

- [shouts]

- It's not very often that I give a big send up

To a guy like adam, but it was easy for me to do.

- That's huge. I don't know what else to say to that.

But, like, my stomach's doing every flop

And flip you can imagine.

But I got a tour in manitoba for tony condello.

And it's not a northern death tour

This time because it's during the summer.

So I go to winnipeg, we're landing pontoon planes

On the lakes to get to the shows.

And we're in cat lake.

I remember tony coming to find me

And there's one phone on the res.

And he said, "listen, we've gotta go to the cop shop."

And it's a double wide.

So I walk in there, pick up the phone.

It's carl de marco.

♪ ♪

"hey, carl, what's going on?"

And he goes, "you've got a contract,

And it's waiting for you--"

[laughs]

[stammers lightly]

"and it's waiting for you down in stamford, connecticut."

Phew.

[rock music]

It almost feels like the second half of my life started there.

The first half was to get to that phone call.

Then that phone call happened and--and it all changed.

♪ ♪

I can look back at it now and realize how pivotal it was.

And I knew it was at the time, but looking in that rearview,

You realize, wow, that single phone call

Changed the entire path.

It was the path I wanted.

It was the path I expected.

But that phone call is what actually did it.

- ♪ you think you know me ♪

♪ but you will never know me ♪

♪ you are lost and scared ♪

- I don't think wwe had an idea

What to do with adam copeland.

- The only trait that edge and adam shared was confusion.

Adam had no idea what edge was.

And therefore, edge was very confused.

♪ ♪

So I didn't understand that there

Was gonna be departments.

You'd have people whose job it was

To try and come up with this stuff.

That's great, but...

[laughs]

Ahh, I just-- I wanna do that myself.

You know, it's my kid's light board.

It's lyric's crayola light board.

And so I'll just put something on there and go,

Ok, there's an idea.

That's a good size.

And then I'll just go, ok, well,

I can trace it now that I have the original drawing.

So that's kind of my process, is I--

I get a pencil and some sharpies and I start doodling.

I don't know why it's always been this process.

I really enjoy it. I think that's also

Part of the reason because of that,

Because it does take me back to when I was a--

A kid, and then a teenager, and then an adult.

[laughs]

Now being a 40-something middle-aged man,

Still doing it.

- ♪ what could have happened to this man ♪

♪ that made him do these things? ♪

- A lot of guys who've

Really shot themselves in the foot

Right out of the gate

Because they don't like their character.

And that doesn't sit well sometimes with the higher ups.

[laughs]

♪ ♪

- I got some of these creative drawings

And I looked like a bee gee taking rave drugs.

Well, what is that?

Nothing was really fleshed out.

Nothing was told to me.

Didn't know what edge was.

Didn't know the story of edge.

Didn't have a back story.

None of that.

♪ ♪

I was really floundering.

♪ ♪

Saying no to that stuff might not have been the best idea,

But I did.

- There was a period where people

Had been in the business for a while

And looked at anybody new,

"hey, you haven't paid your dues yet."

- There's a really fine line there of

Standing up for yourself and what your vision is

And doing what it is that they want.

Now you've kinda got this stigma, like, ok,

This guy's hard to work with.

That could be career suicide.

♪ ♪

- So then I'd design my stuff,

And I would draw it.

♪ ♪

I gotta have my hands in it

In making this thing work,

But that's just not really the way it always works.

- He couldn't wrap his brain around it

'cause I don't think he understood it--

How he would portray this character.

To adam's credit, he's always stood up

For what he believed in.

- That is some of the things you have

To deal with politically,

Both with the office

And also in the dressing room.

- Any time that a new talent comes in

That doesn't have the pedigree, if you will,

To come in and go right into a spot,

I think there's a lot of jealousy.

♪ ♪

He wasn't a seasoned talent, per se.

Guy's been in the business for a cup of coffee

And comes in and he's being hyped in a big way.

- Anybody that's on top-- and trust me on this--

Is always looking over their shoulder

To see who's gonna take their place.

- I won't mention names. Certain other talent

Who have long hair, similar to adam,

They were taking him as a threat.

♪ ♪

There was a lot of political behind the scenes pushing,

"I think you should get a haircut."

Do anything they can to sabotage his look

And image, et cetera.

- There was talk that I would be deaf

With an inability to speak at one point,

Which is the kiss of death.

'cause as a wrestler,

The microphone is one of your tools.

And I thought, man, that's being floated around for me?

I got nothing if they take that away.

- I'm like, "what?"

Like, that was the dumbest idea I've ever frickin' heard.

And I knew that would be a career killer

Before he started.

- I mean, he really would have been dead in the water

If he had to try to get over without being able to talk.

- ♪ I made him say these words ♪

♪ I made him not himself ♪

- I didn't know.

They just said, "he's a tortured soul."

What does that mean?

When in doubt, I just screamed.

"ahh!"

[screaming]

[chuckles] I just screamed.

I'd look up at the ceiling and scream.

- Well, that's what I've heard, the same as you, jr.

This guy is supposed to be tormented.

I mean, every time I've seen him,

He seems to be in some sort of a rage.

- ♪ you think you know me ♪

- We're about to see the debut of edge.

Edge on his way to the ring.

♪ ♪

- I just remember thinking, "ok,

"how do I try and make an impression?

How do I try and get noticed?"

- [screaming] - seemingly on the edge

Of exploding at any time.

- The match was going fine

Until it wasn't.

♪ ♪

- And look at this great, big--oh!

Damn. - Big somersault over the top.

And josé estrada's not moving very much here, king.

- I think josé is out.

- I decided to try this move called the hilo,

Which is a front flip over the top rope

To the floor.

I had knocked josé out,

Out, in my debut match.

I roll in the ring.

Tim white is the referee.

He goes, he's out, kid.

And I just felt the world drop out from underneath me.

♪ ♪

I'd never injured someone.

I'd never hurt someone.

So not only am I smashing that glass,

But I'm doing it in my first match

On television for the company I've always wanted

To work for, and I know how the locker room works.

I know people see that, and the whispers start.

"the kid's not safe.

The kid's not safe. The kid's not safe."

Now, you got people that don't wanna work you.

That's all going through my mind

While I'm on tv in my debut match.

[bell dings] - and that's all of it.

Edge will win his first match. - Whoa!

- I'm sure not the way he wanted,

But he's a winner, needless to say.

- He's over the edge.

♪ ♪

- [exhales]

Now, look at it two ways.

Nowhere to go but up,

Or I just [bleep] the bed

And this could be it.

♪ ♪

[light guitar music]

- I've often said this is kind of my field of dreams.

♪ ♪

Some people have football fields,

Some people have ice rinks.

Now if you had told 16-year-old adam

That one day,

There'd be one of these

At his beck and call,

He would not have believed that.

This is kind of a collection of stuff that

Was never gonna see the light of day,

But we got a wrestling ring, that's ridiculous enough.

This is when I did a series of slim jim commercials.

They had edge skateboarding

Like the grand canyon's a half pipe. [laughs]

Ascending everest

And attacking a schoolteacher, it seems, with a slim jim.

♪ ♪

Once you eat a slim jim,

Anything is possible.

[rock music]

- [growls]

- Easy, chief, one step at a time.

Now eat it, and beat it.

This poster over here,

This was the first wrestling show I ever went to.

For whatever reason, I still had it all these years later.

So it felt like that needed to live here.

We set up the chairs for the show, jay and myself.

And they promised that if we--

If we papered the town, if we postered the town

With these posters and set up chairs,

They'd give us two minutes in the ring.

And that was our-- we didn't get paid.

That was our pay, was, "just let us in the ring."

That was our calling.

It even still boggles my mind

That two kids from a small town like orangeville

Both had the same dream, met each other,

And both chased the dream to the furthest

That you could chase it, and did it.

That still doesn't really register

Or make complete sense to me.

[intense music]

I started on tv June of '98.

I wanna say it was, like,

Six months after that jay started up.

And I was told he was gonna be brought in as my brother.

And then they brought in gangrel, dave heath,

And they put us together as a group called the brood.

[dark synth music plays] [cheering]

And that was the first instance

Where I was like, ooh, there's an element of character here.

- There's one word to describe this trio,

And that's unique.

And gangrel in the middle, he appears to be the leader.

Edge, on his right.

- We're supposed to be, like-- are we vampires, are we goth?

What is this thing? But it was something.

The power lies within us.

- I remember the first time he spoke, which was in new haven

And said, "the freaks only come out at night."

- Because the freaks come out at night.

[laughs] - and the girls screamed!

♪ ♪

- I don't know...

- So I went, yeah, he's gonna-- he's gonna get there.

♪ ♪

- I just pictured this group of, like, really cool vampires,

Whether they had fangs or not,

Just really cool guys.

It didn't matter if you got your butt kicked

Every night, as long as you looked cool doing it.

- Whoa!

The brood not interested to let this thing go.

- Look out, now.

Oh!

- Anything he did was gonna work.

They told me that that's the guy that they were gonna

Strap a rocket to.

They knew he was their future superstar.

- A combined weight of 455 pounds,

Christian and edge!

- When we teamed up, it's like, well,

We've been doing this since the sixth grade.

We know what we do.

Now we get to show everybody what we can do.

♪ ♪

I think there was a realization that adam and jay

Need to be injected into this.

They can't just be edge and christian

Because what is that?

Well, we don't know.

But if we can inject some of our humor

And some of our idiocy into this, maybe,

Just maybe they'll start giving us some microphone time.

- Hey, listen to this. I'm gonna play our music.

[playing kazoo]

- ♪ you think you know me, you think you know me ♪

- That does it. All right, get out!

- We'd added the last element that we needed

To go from just kind of being wrestlers

To being entertainers and understanding

That there is a difference between the two.

- What I really like are those five-second poses.

- For the next five seconds,

We will very generously pose for all of you

With the benefit of flash photography.

Christian and I had been rehearsing some new poses.

- This one we just simply call, "uh-oh!"

- You have to be an entertainer

If you really want this thing to work

And you really want to get to the upper echelons

Of what this thing is.

Here, I'll turn this light on over here.

[light clicks, hums]

There's always gonna be a ladder present

When I'm around, it seems.

I try to avoid them at all costs.

- Yeah, so you have to, like, practice with--

I mean, do you practice with the ladders?

- You don't practice the ladders.

You just don't touch a ladder until it's match time.

[laughs]

That's just for changing light bulbs.

I truly--I don't go anywhere near that thing

Unless-- unless I absolutely have to.

♪ ♪

When most people see ladders,

I think the reaction is, "oh, there's a ladder."

The pit of my stomach

Starts to feel a little queasy when I see a ladder

'cause I know what happens if you fall off of them

Because it was my job.

- There's a saying that every single day of your career

Is one day less of your career.

I think that in some of these matches,

There's not just one day less.

There's probably--you take about 20, 30, 40 days

Off of your career in every high-risk match that you have.

- Matt and jeff hardy against edge and christian.

This is the first tag team ladder match in history.

The match only can end when one team has secured

The $100,000 that's hanging high above the ring.

♪ ♪

- For edge and christian,

It was that first ladder match in cleveland.

They changed the whole landscape

On a ladder match in one match.

- You know, we caught lightning in the bottle

That night, and that took us from being wwe wrestlers

To wwe superstars overnight.

♪ ♪

- We all realized being as young and dumb and hungry

As we were, that if we got an opportunity,

We ought to swing for the fences.

Our goal was to tear that arena down.

♪ ♪

[cheering]

So we started to look at how can we build things

With these ladders... - Oh, look out.

- That we can then fall on... - Ow.

- Or that we can use as a teeter-totter

And slam up into somebody's face.

- Look at that! - Look at this!

- Oh! - What the heck?

- Just trying to think of violent...

- Ah! - Creative ways...

- Oh! - To create things

People hadn't seen before.

- Jeff hardy-- - look at that!

- Leap frogged the ladder, for god sakes,

And dropped the leg. - And we did.

- How in god's name can a human being

Even move after that? - I don't know.

It's unbelievable.

- And then to get to the back and get the congratulations

From your peers,

From people who were already at the top of the show,

Went out of their way to tell us, like,

"damn, guys.

I don't know what you just did, but you did it."

All: Oh!

- I made sure that I was the first guy they saw

When they walked through the curtain.

I looked at all four of them and I said,

"you guys just became stars.

- Uh-oh. Oh, no. Not the power bomb!

- That was their big stamp of approval.

Like, these guys are for real.

These guys are here

And you really have to appreciate that.

- They all had chemistry,

And they worked beautifully together.

In any combination, they defined

What those matches would be for the future of our business.

- The reaction was unlike anything I'd ever experienced

Up until that point in time.

I never experienced standing ovations

Or anything like that.

And the next night on "raw," it happened again.

It was like just goose bumps when I was out there, like,

Just taking it all in 'cause I just couldn't believe

Or even comprehend or understand,

At that point, what that meant.

- Every single night,

You go in front of a live audience.

You want to improve. You want to do better.

And the audience now has an expectation.

As a performer, you can meet that expectation

Or you can exceed it.

And you always want to exceed it.

- It just--we kept having to top ourselves.

And that's a kind of fun place to be,

If I'm being perfectly honest.

♪ ♪

- Well, there you see it, ladies and gentlemen,

The tag team title belts

Hanging about 20 feet above the ring.

- It started. - Edge and christian now.

- Here we go. Whoa!

- Oh, no! - There it is!

- Oh, 3d from up top!

D-von--oh, my god!

- Again. - Double suplex

From the top of the ladder. - Oh!

Swanton bomb, top of the ladder

To the floor, through the table.

- I'm standing on top of this table.

It was wobbling like crazy.

- Matt hardy, it's all--

- Oh! - Oh, no!

- I've just pushed matt hardy off of the thing.

He's flipped and landed directly on his tailbone

Through a table.

Looked so ugly, so I'm double checking to make sure,

Ok, he's moving.

That's a good sign.

Now I have to figure out how to stand up

On this wobbly table that's about to pitch over.

- I just remember the reaction when we were reaching

For the titles.

And I said to adam, I was like, "I'm gonna fall."

He's like, "I'll get them." so he grabbed both of them.

And if I had stood up,

That celebration would have looked a lot different.

[cheering] - edge and christian!

Edge and christian have won it!

♪ ♪

- If you look at it on paper,

The chances of it happening-- stupid.

♪ ♪

Two kids from a small town in southern ontario

With no inroads to the wrestling industry

Whatsoever are gonna find themselves

Standing on a table on top of two ladders

In the pond in anaheim

After doing a match that has never, ever happened before

In the history of wrestling that they've helped create.

If everything ended after this in terms of our team

And all of those things, man, we did it.

We did what we said we were gonna do.

- You know, winning the tag team titles was great,

An amazing feeling.

- We're the kings and the top of the heap

In the tag team world.

♪ ♪

I definitely think tag team title is a stepping stone

To get to that next step.

You're almost there.

You've grabbed that ring.

Now it's time to go for the next one.

- Please welcome my man, the edge!

[cheers and applause]

- Reeking of awesomeness the way we do

And being so totally cool, I'm here at mtv on "trl"

To show them just exactly

What edge, movie star, is all about.

How you doing? - You totally ruined--

- See, she knows what she's talking about.

Being one half of edge and christian,

The most photogenic tag team ever

And being on the real pulse

Of what the teens wanna see,

You know, you can understand why mtv would come to us.

- Edge and edge can.

♪ ♪

- Edge was a big time player star.

And if he'd have stayed

With that tag team,

You know, his career probably would not have lasted.

I mean, it just-- that's just the way it is.

[cheering] - and--hey, wait a minute.

Here comes edge's brother christian

With a steel chair of his own.

- You can only do the same thing for so long

Before it gets repetitive.

And I think we both wanted to break up

Before people were like, "ok, I've seen the act."

♪ ♪

- Once we split, I don't know if either one of us

Understood how hard it was gonna be.

- You wanna know if you can make it

On that stage as a single.

When your time comes,

When they're ready to push you as a big single,

You have to do it

Because if you don't strive to be the best,

You're really spinning your wheels.

- This is your fault! You did it!

- A one man concerto by christian

On his own brother.

♪ ♪

- Because we'd been with the company,

We'd found success with the company

And assumed it would be an easy enough transition

Into this next stage of our career,

And it was anything but.

♪ ♪

- The challenges that edge found out

Was the place was popping.

And you had so many great talents

That knew the business, knew their game.

And I think he could feel pressure from those

That were above them that didn't want them

To supersede the top guys.

- As crazy as it sounds, given the danger involved

In the ladders matches, and later,

The tables, ladders, and chairs matches,

There was still the knock on edge

That he wasn't tough.

- Well, look at him. Does he look tough?

[laughs] you know, come on. Adam's in there.

He's a young kid, all tanned and pretty.

Adam was pretty.

- He looked like a surfer.

He did not look like your stereotypical tough guy.

He didn't look the part, but he was the part.

- Because he's a handsome man with a great physique

And a young man with the long hair,

There are gonna be those who don't think he has

What we refer to as intestinal fortitude.

- Those that would say that adam didn't have

The intestinal fortitude

Had never gotten in the ring with him.

Edge as the performer was willing to do

Anything that he had to do.

- I thought there was a good chance he could be held back

And not climb to the heights that he would be able to.

- I was treading water

And just kinda keeping my nose above that waterline.

- And now edge taking angle down.

- And then paul heyman called me and he said,

"we wanna team you and hulk hogan.

What do you think?"

And I went, "I think that is a stupendous idea.

We will have a blast."

[cheering] - the following contest is for

The wwe tag team championship.

- You know, I'm not a tag team guy,

So don't have that psychology.

It was just totally

Out of my wheelhouse, you know?

So I said, "just whatever you wanna do, brother."

- And you tell me that, well, it's gonna be a lot, then.

[laughs]

- It was just such a crazy night 'cause I'd never been

The tag team champion before.

And all of a sudden, here I'm in the ring

With some guy that's watched hulkamania

Ever since he was a kid.

And I was like his wrestling hero growing up.

And to be in the ring with him and know how cool this was,

It was almost like I had my son with me or something.

- For edge to the honors. - Leg drop!

- The leg drop in stereo!

The cover.

- Two, three!

- Hollywood hulk hogan and edge have done it.

They win the tag team titles.

- Here are your winners

And the new wwe tag team champions.

Hollywood hulk hogan and edge.

- What's your next step?

- [inhales sharply] next step for edge?

Probably not tag teaming.

Probably go back off and, you know,

Continue what I was doing before with the singles thing.

- Five-o! - Oh, wow!

Did you hear that?

- Edge is out, man.

- I started experiencing, like,

Just headache, like, just pain.

And my left arm started to atrophy.

And I noticed it in my hands.

Like, the meat here was disappearing.

- Uh-oh. - Eddie's going down.

- Oh, my god! - Oh, god!

- Oh, my god! [cheering]

- When you're young and hungry like that,

You're gonna do whatever you can to make it.

He was sucking it up, just kinda, you know,

Gritting his teeth and fighting through it

Until he just couldn't do it anymore.

- I was starting to see little divots in my forearm.

I was like, oh, that's weird.

And then my rear delt just left one day.

It was just gone.

It looked like someone had golfed off of it.

And that's when I finally gave in and said,

"I think something's going on."

♪ ♪

I went to steve austin's spine doctor

Because he had had a spinal fusion at this point.

He goes, "you gotta come down to san antonio

And see dr. Youngblood."

- This is disc material and bone spurs right here.

And it should be a nice symmetrical oval.

- So I went down and ended up getting

A double fusion from c5 to c7.

♪ ♪

And basically, what they did is they took a chunk from my hip

And they put it in my neck

And replaced the ruptured discs.

- Get this bone graft down in here.

♪ ♪

- And they put a plate and six screws into the back.

And I just remember having to sleep sitting up

In that neck collar for about three months.

You'd get a couple of hours here and there.

And if I woke up, I'd just turn on the tv

And just kind of mindlessly watch something

And try not to fall down the well of depression

That every injury has and every athlete has encountered.

♪ ♪

I had to calibrate my brain to the aspect of

The psychological toll that takes.

When you're used to going 120

With no hint of putting your foot on the brakes,

To you're in reverse

And you're going in reverse fast,

That takes some-- some mental gymnastics.

♪ ♪

I had always hoped one day it'll be my choice

To, you know, walk away.

And this wasn't my choice. I think that's the hardest part.

Four days after I had the surgery,

I thought it would be a good idea to go in

And just, "right, I'm going to the gym."

And I got in there, and I sat down,

And I tried to lift the weight.

And it was seven pounds,

And my arms were just shaking like that.

And I put the weight down.

I feel like crying is what I felt like doing.

I got up, and I walked out of the gym.

♪ ♪

- You have this thought-- and you can't help it--

"am I going to get another opportunity

"when I get healthy to come back and do this?

"am I going to be healthy enough to come back

And do it at the level?"

So yeah, your mind plays horrible,

Horrible tricks on you.

- You know, I talked to michael hayes and he said,

"you know, worst case scenario,

If you can't come back, you've lived your dream."

And I thought, "well, I've lived it,

But I haven't fulfilled my final dream."

That's to win either the wwe

Or the world heavyweight championship.

- Ladies and gentlemen, this has been my trip of just--

Oh, my god!

Who's that? Is that triple h?

Wait a minute. Oh--

- At least you didn't say test.

[laughter]

- I had gone down to see him at his place in florida

When he was recovering.

It was funny because he looked relieved

To sort of be on a break.

I think the first couple of years were a whirlwind.

♪ ♪

Maybe a blessing in disguise to sort of take a deep breath

And be back at home.

- You're interrupting my morning coffee.

Thank you very much.

This is my humble abode. Where should we head to?

Books. I read all the time.

That's pretty much one thing I do.

My own, which I wrote, by the way.

Apple mango tango.

Ah, see that right there?

That right there is an ass crack that is implanted

In my couch from when I had my neck surgery.

I had to sleep there sitting up just like this.

So my ass crack is permanently embedded in this spot.

- I think it's the motivation.

It's setback, yes.

But I know where I can go and I know what the company

Feels about me, so I'm going to work harder

To prove that they were right in spite of

Having this happen.

- And making his way to the ring,

He is the intercontinental champion

And toronto's own, edge!

- I thought, man, I've been off.

I haven't been back in toronto--

I think it was two years at that point.

I'm coming back. I'm the intercontinental champion.

I've had spinal fusion surgery.

This has gotta be

A hero's welcome, right?

- Both jericho and batista

Are on the outside. [crowd booing]

- I came out and they booed me.

[crowd booing]

- What is going through the mind of edge right now?

It's ironic here, this crowd.

- I'm amazed at these fans here in toronto.

- You could see it on edge's face.

Like, "why don't you love me?

"I'm edge! You're my hometown audience.

Don't you love me?"

- What our vision is, you know,

Edge is this heroic character and fighting through the odds

And yadda, yadda, yadda.

They're not buying it 'cause it's the same thing

I was doing before I left.

They were buying it then,

But for whatever reason,

This break has caused them to not buy it anymore.

- Yes!

- Instead of asking, "why do you hate me?"

Make 'em hate you more.

And turn it around to take all of the things

That you do being a nice guy and just put a twist on it.

And just put a little bit of an attitude on it.

And that will help the audience confirm their belief.

"you're an [bleep]. I don't like you."

- Did not see that coming.

- Oh, the spear.

My god, right in the sternum.

A big time spear. - That's it!

- It ends with it. [bell dings]

[crowd booing]

- Now they want something different, they're telling us.

So let's give 'em something different.

- When you're kind of pegged

To be a future superstar,

You're gonna maybe even get

Some more opportunities

That others wouldn't get.

And I felt like maybe he thought

His chances were running out.

- The following contest

Is the money in the bank ladder match.

[cheering]

The first individual to climb the ladder

And retrieve the briefcase will win

A contract for a world heavyweight

Championship match.

- And the edge is gonna win this thing.

Somebody get in there!

- He--but--he's got it! [bell dings]

- It can be extremely difficult

For a guy to go from being

A babyface to a heel.

And normally, it is a recipe for disaster.

But man, as a heel, I think he is just so much better.

[rock music]

- That then became this character

Who was just maniacally obsessed with being

The world champion because that was the last thing

That needed to be done on my checklist of things.

And that's adam sitting back and going, "right, what else?

"you got that. Did that, cool.

"did that. Did that. Did that.

"gotta do that, though.

I mean, this can't end until that happens."

With that neck injury, it made me realize

Like, you're gonna have to make it happen

Sooner than later.

- Nobody goes anywhere.

This night is not over.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate john cena

In retaining the wwe championship.

[crowd booing] there's one more match

To happen here tonight.

This individual is cashing in his money in the bank

Privilege that he earned at wrestlemania.

The wwe championship match will take place

Right here, right now.

John cena defends against edge!

- I'd like to think because adam is so focused

On all things wwe, that that truly

Is the pinnacle achievement.

He's definitely proving himself.

With new performers, that's a tough mountain to climb.

Everybody wants to be the champion.

[bell dings]

- Hear him call for the bell, and here comes

The r-rated superstar, edge,

To bloody john cena over and over again if he has to.

Oh! And again!

[crowd chanting] - one, two, three.

He got him! [bell dings]

Edge has shocked the world!

- This was indeed a historical night.

- Edge is the new wwe champion.

- They told me the plan.

"you're gonna have this thing for three weeks,

"and then you're going to drop it back to john.

"and then john is gonna

Wrestle triple h at wrestlemania."

[cheering] - off the back of his head.

He's gonna do it with the f-u!

Oh! He may have to--

Cena pulling back [indistinct] as champion.

There it goes! [bell dings]

♪ ♪

- That one put a big chip on my shoulder.

I found out after the fact that there was

A lot of very vocal, "I wasn't ready for it.

Don't know if I'll ever be ready for it."

It was the locker room where that--

That was the feeling.

All of that was ammunition for me.

♪ ♪

- There's always somebody in the dressing room that's like,

"ehh, him? I don't get it."

But they don't appreciate what he was doing.

- I think from my perspective,

He got to win the championship.

And it's all about, "what is my perception going forward

"and how can I take what's happened

And continue a compelling narrative?"

♪ ♪

- The ratings go up, the hits on the website go up.

Ok, merchandise is selling. This is a good thing.

We're gonna go with this.

"no, we're not."

That pissed me off.

So I got mick, right.

Now we can show everybody.

- The first ever wwe hardcore champion,

Mick foley versus the r-rated superstar

In an extreme rated match.

- Mick foley, for my career, was absolutely what edge needed

To finally kind of cement where I,

Adam, thought edge belonged.

[audience oohs]

- He was a guy-- and still is to this day--

A guy who likes to prove people wrong.

♪ ♪

- Spear! He hit the spear.

- There's only so much a human body can take.

- Trying to roll to the outside.

- Oh, my god.

♪ ♪

[cheering] - and oh, no!

There it is.

- There's barbie.

- One of the things I never really thought about

Was how barbed wire would feel

When it's wrapped around a baseball bat

And it's hitting you in the stomach.

[audience exclaiming]

Those thoughts crossed my mind as they were about to happen,

Like a nanosecond before.

[audience exclaiming] oh, ow.

Oh, that sucks.

One in the back-- ah, that really--wow, ok.

Mm-hmm. That--that's barbed wire.

That doesn't do good thing-- your skin's not meant for that.

- Oh, take a look it. Take a look--take it--

Oh, my-- - the thumbtacks,

I mean, the look on my face pretty much sums it up.

It's kind of like being on the high-diving board

And just back flopping into a pool.

But like, I'm talking one of the high-diving boards

From the olympics.

That kind of, like, smack where it might knock you out.

Like, take your breath away.

♪ ♪

In the midst of this violent theater of the absurd,

You're getting a real--a real emotion in the eyes there.

- Oral surgery being performed by the dr. Mick foley.

- Oh, my god. - Oh, my god, here we go.

- We had an idea in our head.

I was borrowing from a couple of scenes I had witnessed,

But I just felt like doing it on the grandest stage

Of them all.

It makes it our moment.

- Oh, my god. Here we go.

Oh, my god. What's gonna happen?

- Look out! [audience exclaims]

Ah! Oh, my god!

- Oh, my god!

- And I'm crawling over, I roll him over.

I said, "I love you, mick."

- Spear through the table, covered.

- Two, three! [bell dings]

- [laughs]

The last thing that you think someone

Would say in that instance.

And he said the same thing.

♪ ♪

[cheering]

- I don't know if I've ever witnessed a wrestlemania

Moment like we just saw.

- Right there!

- Mick, you did what you wanted to do.

- Thanks, pat.

♪ ♪

- I don't need one.

I don't need one. - It'll take--you sure?

- It's--no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.

- It's the smell of forearm hair burning.

A little bit of skin, as well.

- Let me take a look at it now. It's sealed.

No stitches. - All right.

- As stupid as it sounds, you survive

Something like that together

And you create this story together.

And that feels really, really good.

You feel horrible, but you feel elated.

And after that, I started to see respect in the ring.

- He is the rated-r superstar

And the wwe champion, edge!

[cheering]

- Man, is he a really great heel.

He's just got that slime,

And he enjoys it.

- It's funny because the people that are really genuinely

True nice guys oftentimes are better at being a heel

And being that nasty, despicable character.

- What a cheap shot by edge.

- I thought there could be money

To be made if you're that guy.

- Undertaker has sent edge straight to hell.

- A lot of those characters are big,

Large, large men.

Undertaker, john cena, batista, kane, big show.

A lot of their character involves

Throwing that bad guy around.

- My god, look out!

- I was that bad guy.

- Look at the strength, the power.

- Ohh! - Whoa! Ahh!

- I want you all to know that I'll be a champion

That you can be proud of.

A champion that will take on any and all comers.

- Batista bomb!

- Edge!

♪ ♪

- Ohh! - Oh, my god!

Bodies and ladders are broken.

- I didn't fully grasp how bad I felt.

♪ ♪

I just thought it was, well, yeah,

I got a double fusion in my neck.

Of course that's how I feel.

- I was one of the few people

That knew how much pain he was in,

What he was dealing with.

He was kinda keeping it as quiet as he could

Until after wrestlemania.

Obviously, it wasn't a good situation.

- Finally, in the lead up to wrestlemania 27,

I got hit in the back with a chair...

- Oh!

- Live. - Well, that's gonna

Teach edge.

- Man, he's gonna be going into wrestlemania

A little bit more banged up than I thought.

- And I think this was the first time that cameras caught

The extent of what my body did...

[laughs] when stuff like this would happen.

♪ ♪

Alberto was grabbed me by the shirt and just flailing

Me around and I couldn't-- couldn't do anything.

Like, I was just like a limp noodle.

The trainers came running out once we were dark,

Once the show went off the air.

And they're, "what's going on?

I'm like, "no, no, no. All good. I'm good."

You know? What--what exactly is going on?

I just lost my arms for a bit, that's all.

[cheers and applause]

- Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to wrestlemania!

[cheering]

- I do a bunch of strength tests the day of wrestlemania,

Passing everything.

We make the decision, let's get through wrestlemania.

- Spear! Spear!

Del rio's down, and edge retains his championship.

[cheers and applause]

- After wrestlemania, they, uh--

They wanted me to go get the mris, I got the mris.

I drove up to charlotte,

Did a spear on this guy.

- And edge with the spear on the outside!

- Kinda lost my arms again.

- He injured the disc above the level of his previous fusion.

It was literally impinging on the spinal cord and also

The nerves to his arms at the time.

- Oh, my god!

- There's no way he could have continued to wrestle

With the injury that he had.

The risks would have simply been unjustifiable.

- So I then get a call, like, two days later from vince.

Those calls are pretty rare.

He said, uh,

"you know, this is the toughest call I've ever--

"I've ever had to make, but, uh,

You gotta retire."

[somber music]

Huh.

♪ ♪

- Think I might have been the first person that he called.

He was choked up, and I think

Even though he knew it was closer to the end

Than he was to the start,

Not being able to close the book on his own terms

Was hard to swallow.

- It was a big shock, um, 'cause, man, he was rolling.

He had no other choice than to walk away

If he wanted to be healthy.

And it--it was tough.

It was tough to watch.

♪ ♪

- I knew I was getting closer to the end.

I didn't know that was my last match.

Like, that can't be my last match.

I didn't know.

I would have treated it differently.

I would have come into it differently.

I would have approached it differently.

I don't--I don't know how, but I would have.

- Rumors have been swirling all day long about

What edge is about to tell us.

I hope it's not true.

- I went to "raw," and I basically

Just went out and talked as adam.

Like, there was no edge.

Last little while, I've been in a lot of pain.

It was adam

Ending what he'd always wanted to do.

And that's it.

The wwe wanted me to go get more tests.

And thankfully, I did.

Because the mri showed that, uh,

That I have to retire.

[crowd jeering]

That's--I mean, trust me, it's not my choice.

The doctors have told me that-- that I got no choice.

I'm gonna miss all of this. All of it.

No matter what, I came out here

And I tried to give you guys as much as I had

Every single night.

And in turn, you guys gave it right back to me.

[cheers and applause]

Thank you, guys.

[cheering]

[all chanting] - thank you, edge.

Thank you, edge. Thank you, edge.

Thank you, edge.

- It was just, like, shocking to me.

I felt bad for him, and I know

He felt like a good part of his life was being ripped off.

- I cried.

I cried because I felt

For adam copeland, the human being.

It's sad when a talent

Has to lose what they love

And what they have a passion for

And what they've dreamt of doing their whole life,

And it's taken away from you in an instant.

♪ ♪

- There's gonna be some uneasiness

In his soul that is never going to go away.

That's what we live with if we don't have closure

On our careers.

- I have to figure out how to wrap my mind around this

Because this is all I know.

This is what I've done with my entire adult life.

This is all I've wanted to do since I was a kid.

If I don't figure this out,

Emotionally, this is-- this could be bad.

This could cause a wormhole of,

I don't know what.

But I need to put on my big boy pants

And just go, right, what is life now?

- Here we go.

- You missed us! - There you go.

- [laughs]

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

Being a dad now,

Having not necessarily a template

To draw ideas from on how to do this dad thing,

I really just came to my own conclusions,

Is that all you gotta do is love your kids

And support them.

- Is there any ice cream in there or is it just candy?

- I put ice cream in there.

- It sounds delicious with gummy frogs and marshmallows

And chocolate. - It tastes delicious.

- Beth and I were on the roster at the same time

But very just, "hey, beth."

And like, never called me adam.

It was always edger. "hey, edger."

- I could totally have him wrapped around

My little pinky finger, too.

- And I retired, and then we started talking

And talking and talking and talking.

Then it just kind of blossomed from there

And we started dating seriously.

And then started talking about the idea of,

Ok, well, we're gonna have kids, right?

- Guess what? - What?

Chicken butt.

Being a dad is easily, hands down,

No competition whatsoever,

The best thing I've ever done with my life.

- I tell him this a lot.

But I said, "adam,

"you've become the dad that you

Always deserved growing up."

That will get on the floor

With the kids and be silly

And let them paint his toenails.

He's just all-in on being a dad.

- It was a life away from wrestling.

It really was. We didn't watch.

We moved away from it and into what everyday life was now.

But if wrestling's not on the table,

I still need to do something creative,

Whatever that is.

♪ ♪

- You had no business here.

- This is haven.

Making things disappear is my business.

♪ ♪

I'm gonna go act on a tv show.

I don't really know how to do that, but,

I mean, I guess I'll figure it out.

- Action!

- I had four scenes in the first episode that I was in.

And halfway through the second scene,

They pulled me aside and said, "can you do more episodes?"

I mean, I got nothing else to do now.

[laughs] sounds good.

So that first episode, it turned into four that season,

Turned into 41, all told.

And I realized in that time how much I loved acting.

♪ ♪

After all, I am a viking.

None of this was possible without beth.

She has been my support.

She has been my everything.

The mother of my children, my partner, my best friend.

She almost took on--

And I think on purpose--

What my mom would have done.

I think that was probably part of a pact that they made.

And I don't know if they officially did,

But I know they did.

♪ ♪

- We really wanted his mom, judy,

To be here with us in asheville.

And we were working on our immigration papers.

And right around that time, she was diagnosed with cancer.

[dark music]

- It was really a hectic time just because

I had already signed on to do "vikings."

I found myself doing this triangle of travel

For about 2 and 1/2 years,

Where it'd be asheville-- dad, husband,

Try and be all of those things.

Gotta get up toronto, check on my mom, see how she is.

I gotta go back to dublin.

Got some scenes coming up.

Then back to asheville, then toronto, dublin.

Then maybe back to toronto.

And it was pretty exhausting. [door creaks, slams]

And the emotional aspect of watching my mom

Go through, you know, chemo,

And just battle through this thing.

♪ ♪

- Yeah, I was with her the last five months.

It was gut wrenching.

I just said, "adam--"

I text him and I said, "you better get back home soon."

I said, "I don't think this is good."

♪ ♪

- I think she finally felt like she could rest

Because I had beth

And she knew, like, I had a partner

That truly has my back.

♪ ♪

- Losing his mom like that,

That tore that constant in his life.

♪ ♪

It really hit him hard.

And I don't know how much he dealt with that grief

For a long time.

♪ ♪

- The weird thing about depression, I think,

Is sometimes you don't necessarily know you are

Because it becomes just mundane

And--and you just--

I don't know.

♪ ♪

It's a weird funk, like you're just, you know,

Kind of stuck in the mud, right?

♪ ♪

I don't know if I really fully grasped that I was

Until I pulled myself out of it.

And that I can attribute to the girls.

♪ ♪

Howdy, girls. - Aww.

- And realizing like, whoa, hold on a second.

You know, snap out of it. [indistinct chatter]

- Yeah, well, so did you. - 'cause there's a camera here.

- They became kind of the--

The starting point for everything.

- I don't think it's the wrestling

That makes him happy.

I think it's the challenge.

Whatever the toughest route is,

Whatever the road least traveled is,

That's what makes him feel alive.

I remember once or twice, it was ever said,

Like, "I wonder--I wonder if I could have one more match."

And I would shut that down real quick.

When that man comes up with an idea,

There ain't no stopping him.

If he wants something, he manifests it.

- How's it going? I'm sheamus, aka the celtic warrior

Here with the rated-r superstar, edge.

We are going in the mountains, fella,

And we are not coming back.

♪ ♪

- [laughs]

- That was a good one. - Whoo.

- They came flying up and my brother-in-law eric

Was behind me with the gopro.

And he's like, "whoa, dude, are you ok?"

I was like, "yeah, actually."

- As long as you're all right. That's the important thing.

- Yeah, that was my first, like, good one.

People see that and go, why can't you wrestle?

I feel great. I feel alive.

I feel like--that's all that was running through my head.

- Holy [bleep]. - There we go.

- Oh, yeah. - There we go.

♪ ♪

- I feel like I was a big roadblock for the return.

♪ ♪

I retired from wrestling in 2012.

It was six or seven days later,

Adam had neck surgery.

We don't talk about it a lot anymore,

But he was having very bad symptoms

At the time of his retirement.

He was dropping things. He had atrophy.

He had nerve damage.

And so what I was told when he had that next surgery

Was, like, "if he gets rear-ended,

You know, in a car accident or something, like, he could die."

- She'll tell me, you know, we would be out for two hours

Running errands and then you'd have

To go get flat because your head would just be pounding.

And I've washed that out of the memory banks a little bit.

[mat thunks] - I said, listen,

For this to happen, there's two things.

I gotta hear it from the best in the world that it's ok.

Because for a long time, I've been told this will end badly.

And number two is, I gotta see it with my own eyes.

I gotta see this and I gotta make sure you're ok.

♪ ♪

[mat thunking] - [grunts]

Was that good? Was that enough?

♪ ♪

- Ah, ah.

- How many wives can you do that to?

♪ ♪

[mat thunks loudly]

- Come on, kid! Come on!

- No. [laughs]

- Once he took that first bump and I looked down at him

And he looked up at me and we were just like,

"is everything ok?"

And like, I was just, like, holding my breath.

And he's like, "I think I'm ok."

- So I went up, met with the doctors.

- We had a long, detailed discussion

And we thought that, yes, there was minimal risk.

There's risk any time you do these kinds of things.

But we ended up feeling that it was safe.

- I still don't-- can't fully explain it.

Just worked really hard, you know,

To strengthen everything.

You know, there's still parameters.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not gonna try and land on my head.

But that's pretty much everybody in the world.

Got that final clearance, and then it really became real.

[crowd cheering]

- Welcome to the 33rd royal rumble.

- If someone took away the thing

That at that point in your life you loved most,

And after that, you landed on your feet,

You started a beautiful family,

You did all of these things,

But someone dangles that carrot

Of doing it again and ending it

The way you want to,

How many people are gonna say no?

- When I found out he was gonna come back,

I thought it was the most amazing, coolest thing

That I've seen happen in this business,

Maybe of all time.

- I was excited for him

Because he was gonna

Have an opportunity to go out

The way that he wanted

To go out and finish

What he started, really.

- [exhales] about to blow up.

- Yeah, man. [laughter]

- Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

- Yeah.

- [mouthing]

God, he looks amazing, doesn't he?

♪ ♪

I think that's when it really became real for beth,

For the company, for everyone to really

Start to go, "oh, this thing is--

Not only can it happen, it's now going to happen."

- And in ten seconds, entry number 21.

[crowd chanting] - three, two, one.

[buzzer blares]

- Who's it gonna be?

- ♪ you think you know me ♪

[cheers and applause]

- Oh, my!

The rated-r superstar!

[victorious rock music]

♪ ♪

- People are always looking for those surprises.

I dare say, edge was a huge surprise.

And an unbelievable live response.

- It's been nine long years.

[cheering]

♪ ♪

[fireworks booming]

♪ ♪

Edge, with a spear!

Now this is a royal rumble moment.

Oh, a spear fest at the rumble.

[all chanting] welcome back! Welcome back!

Welcome back! Welcome back!

Welcome back! Welcome back! Welcome back! Welcome back!

- It's still surreal, you know?

And it really kinda felt like a dream sequence out there.

It felt really good to hear them react

The way I thought they would.

That's--that's the... [snaps fingers]

Oh, you can't--

Oh, you can't beat that.

I know there's not many of these left for me.

So I have to truly soak it all in.

- The rated-r superstar!

Edge dumps orton! - Oh, oh.

Edge wins! Edge wins!

Edge is going to wrestlemania.

- If you wrote this as a script for hollywood,

They'd say it's impossible.

It can never happen, it's not realistic.

♪ ♪

Yet, here we are.

- Adam's comeback has been special.

First of all, it was never supposed to happen.

So any time you hear something like that, that's excellent.

Second of all, it's the best he's ever looked.

- I've been waiting for the moment for someone to step up

To face me at wrestlemania.

- The ultimate opportunist strikes again.

The rated-r superstar battering the phenomenal one.

- Oh, spear in mid-air!

- What makes him a legend

Is the fact that it's in his blood.

I mean, when he was a kid, he wanted to be a wrestler.

He lived his whole life wanting to be a wrestler.

And he left a mark that you can't erase on this business.

- The rated-r superstar,

Edge!

- The edge fears no man.

- ♪ you think you know me ♪ - look at this great--oh!

Oh, my god! Edge with a 20-foot ladder!

- Look out!

- There's few wrestlers that have had the journey

That adam copeland has had.

- ♪ you think you know me ♪

- To have it gone for nine years,

Yeah, I mean, nine years is long enough that you think,

This thing has sailed.

That ship is gone.

And it's not even on the horizon.

- Edge is out of it.

Oh, my god! Oh, my god!

- So I... [sighs]

I had to come to terms with that.

- Bodies and ladders are broken.

- No! - And now suddenly,

Wait, hold on a second.

This is doable, and I got it back now.

Even if it's for this limited time frame,

I'm going to make sure that I soak in

Every single part of it.

♪ ♪

So in a strange way, I'm almost thankful for the nine years.

- I love you.

- Because in that nine years, beth and I become a couple.

We have kids.

- The extra special thing, he's a great husband, a great dad.

He's got a lot more things to balance,

So I respect the hell out of him for what he's done.

- It's made me appreciate all of this so much more

And not look past it and really understand

That you have to live in every single moment

As it's happening.

- He's not a wrestler that stands out

For a particular time or the end of his career

Where he was great.

He's a guy that was great throughout his whole career.

- I'll consider edge one of the all-time greats.

- He's a legend.

He's the guy.

- He's quietly carved out one of the greatest careers

In the history of the sport.

- From the get-go,

Edge had something, and you saw it.

I'm just proud of the man he's become.

- I'll be able to know when the end is,

And be able to walk away from it...

♪ ♪

And know that I'm walking away from it.

That's gonna be huge.

This time, it's gonna be my choice.

And in a strange way,

I'm looking forward to that, too.

♪ ♪