Christian Cage and Adam Copeland are back.
This Saturday, the former TNT Champions will put their differences aside for one common goal - to take down Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler. But putting Cage and Copeland together wasn’t an easy feat.
Christian was still the leader of the Patriarchy so he had to wrap that story up. While many would say that Christian’s story following All In was pretty rushed, Copeland and Cage themselves understand that.
That’s why they haven’t ignored the fact that Christian is essentially the same person. Copeland talks about having to navigate working with Christian’s heel persona to the Toronto Sun.
"You know, I think he might have been one of those guys that when he’s done, you fully grasp and appreciate, and I know within the industry, people understand, because all you gotta do is get in there with him once and go, ‘Oh! Damn, okay. I wasn’t familiar with your game,’ as they say. He can do whatever you put in front of him, and I think that’s the ultimate testament to a performer is you can put him in any situation, he’s gonna knock it out of the park.
Put him in a gimmick match, put him in a straight-up wrestling match, put him in a tag match, put him in a TLC match, it doesn’t matter. He’s gonna pull it off and now he’s cultivated this character to where it is. That was our biggest struggle in doing this. It’s like, ‘Okay, how do we maintain that? We can’t lose that because that’s the thing that was strangely make him beloved.’
What we realized, it just took both of us being in the ring together, and my character would almost say, ‘Oh, it’s okay. He’s an asshole, but, he’s ours, and we just have to accept him as he is.’ That was the key, I think, you know, because if I’m not standing there and he’s saying all that stuff, well, then he’s just a horrible person."
Copeland feels that if he can acknowledge that Christian is a horrible person then they can get over the hurdle of him not changing character.
"But if it’s your horrible person, and you know it going in… that was, I think, key to making this thing work, and also making sure that it wasn’t just a greatest hits where we come out and do five-second poses and talk about dork chops and heosity. You know, we’re 51 now. It has to be different, and for us and the type of guys that we are and the brains that we have, we didn’t just wanna come back and do, okay, well, we’ll do this and this and this because we’ve done it before and it worked.”
Christian is certainly an underrated performer and his work will go down as one of AEW’s best. Copeland & Cage vs. FTR are scheduled to open All Out tomorrow and we'll continue to see how this new dynamic between the former WWE Tag Team Champions work.