WWE Hall of Famer and former WWE and World Heavyweight Champion “The Rater R Superstar” Edge joined Wrestle Talk Radio Sunday Night. In a nearly 30 minutes interview, he discussed his appearance on SyFy’s shot Haven and how he got into acting, his skit on Mind of Mencia commentating on a match between Moses and Jesus, his impending neck surgery, transition from in-ring promo work to acting, being there for Christian’s World Title win, the iconic TLC match with the Hardy’s and the Dudley’s at Wrestlemania X-7, the memorable ‘Five Second Pose’ idea as well as who came up with the concept and several favorite poses, what it was like hugging Kane on Smackdown, his passion for arts and reading, would he consider comedy as a future avenue, his Hall of Fame induction and being the youngest inductee in the Hall, cutting his hair and the decision/reason to do so, the legacy of Edge and so much more.
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What Led Him To Become An Actor: “When I was forced into retirement and having to come to terms with that, this fell in my lap and it ended up just being, I guess, the next step of what I might do; I’m still not entirely positive, but it’s been a lot of fun so far. And it still taps into those creative juices that I know, I realize now, that I’m going to have to get out one way or the other, whether it’s writing or reading or painting or something like that. Some people are wired where they can crunch numbers or sit in an office; I can’t do that, I just have to get it out some other way. I can stand in a gallery all day and look at things or just hike a mountain or something like that, but I cant, I can’t sit in an enclosed space for too long.”
His Acting Career & Upcoming Neck Surgery: “You know, the acting thing was never my intent at all. I never saw myself doing anything, wrestling was kind of it for me. Through the years, WWE would say, ‘Hey, what about this?’ and I’d say ‘Ok, sure. Yeah, I’ll do it, sounds like fun’ but I’m still going to come back to wrestling; it’s not like I’m going to take off for a year and go make movies or anything like that. Even when I did shoot that WWE movie, I still maintained the wrestling schedule. So, it was never my goal or anything like that but then when faced with retirement, I was like ‘Ok, well, this has once again fallen into my lap. I guess I’ll give this a shot. Worth a try’ Going forward, right now, Haven is the only think on the docket.”
“But I have to get neck surgery, again, in November. I’d been putting that off since I retired just because something would come up, like the Hall of Fame. I don’t want to sit on my butt for four months in a neck collar and then show up on stage and have people go ‘Woah, retirement hasn’t been good to him.’ And then, from there it was ‘Ok, Haven was starting to shoot again and I need four months to recover from the surgery,” so I just haven’t had enough time yet to get the surgery done. So I was like, ok, the season has wrapped; I’ll do the promotional stuff and a few appearances here and there and then November 8th is the surgery and I thought I’ll just concentrate on that, getting healthy and then go from there.”
His Iconic TLC match at Wrestlemania X-7 with the Hardy’s and Dudley’s: “At Wrestlemania 16, we actually won the Tag Team Championships for the first time, so that one really sticks out for me, because there had been talk about breaking us up as a tag team and we thought we had so much to offer as a team, and it would have been a waste to not let us do our thing. Up until that point, we’d never even really talked on camera because no one thought we could. We knew what we could do; we knew we were just a couple of morons and you give us a mic and man, we’re going to have some fun with it. So, thankfully, at Wrestlemania 16, we got the chance to do that.”
“Fast forward a year later, to Wrestlemania 17 and it was like ‘Ok, there’s some pretty good matches here’. We had Rock/Austin, Undertaker/ Triple H, Shane/Vince , I mean it was a pretty stacked card and we were really proud of the fact that one of the main events of that show was the Hardy’s, the Dudley’s and Edge and Christian. We knew we were doing something different and we had to come through and had to deliver; we knew we could do something that no one else was doing. I do remember that night though; we got to the back and were like ‘Man, the crowd wasn’t that great, huh? I don’t know; they just weren’t there like we thought.’ We’d done some ridiculous spots; not realizing, up until that point we’d never worked a crowd of that size or a dome for that matter, so the sound goes straight up; it doesn’t come at you like it does in an arena. So, that was an adjustment because we watched it back and we were like ‘Oh, the crowd was going nuts; we just couldn’t hear it.’ So that was pretty interesting.”
Who came up with the idea of the ‘Five Second Pose’ gimmick: “I wish, I wish I could tell you whose exact idea. I do know that Jay (Christian), myself and Brian Gewirtz (now Head Writer of RAW) would all sit down and we would just bounce ridiculous things off the wall to see what would stick; whether it was words or you know. The genesis of it started when I remember saying ‘I don’t want to come through the crowd anymore. I think that whole Goth, mysterious thing; we aren’t that anymore. We should be cocky; we should not want the audience to touch us.’ So, that was the genesis of that whole thing and then it became: ‘Ok, we’ll still give you fans something; we’ll let you take our picture for five seconds.’ That’s kind of where that all was born, but the three of us would just sit around and say ‘What about rediculosity? That could work, huh? What about toolshed? Those are good words. How about Reeking of Awesomeness?’ If it made us laugh, it stuck.”
Hugging Kane on Smackdown: “We’ve have (had some hellacious feuds) and outside the ring, he’s one of my close friends, so the idea I could hug him on national TV and he really has no choice in the matter really tickled my funny bone. I loved the idea because I know, inside, he’s going ‘Oh my God’ and I’m loving that fact because I pitched the idea so I was like ‘Ok, I wanna do …. I want to hug those guys’ and they went ‘Oh, ok. Sure.’ And Daniel Bryan is one of my favorite guys too so I figured if I could interact with these two, and do something just fun. I don’t want come back and do these serious, angry promos; there’s no pay off. So, you know, if I could be involved in a fun moment and something that kids can have fun with and people are going to get a kick out of. I get a kick out of too; I get all fired up and kind of make stuff up while I’m out there. That’s always fun for me too is to try and get them to break; a lot of the things I said, they didn’t know I was going to say. That’s always fun, to see if I can get the big fella to smile. And then, I really enjoy Damien Sandow; I really like what he’s doing. So I thought this is cool, this is awesome; I can further something, I can be there and help further something along, it helps Haven. Everybody wins.”
