At the AEW Double Or Nothing PPV earlier this year, Adam "Edge" Copeland competed in a Barbed Wire Steel Cage Match which saw him leap from the top of the cage.
As he hit an elbow drop on Malakai Black, the WWE Hall of Famer landed awkwardly and fractured his tibia. That required a 12-hour surgery and was used as an example by many of AEW's detractors about the unsafe situations Tony Khan allows his wrestlers to put themselves in.
Copeland has been on the shelf ever since and, when Sports Illustrated recently caught up with him, they asked whether he has any regrets about the dangerous stunt.
"If you've watched my career, it's not out of character," he started. "It's one of those deals where every once in a while during my career, I felt like it was time to do something a little stupid, and for whatever reason, my brain has not gotten the memo that my body got that I'm 50 years old."
"I was wrestling much more often, which gave me a false sense of security in that, 'Yeah, I got that, no problem.' I also didn't realize how much higher AEW cages are until I got up there and went, 'Oh, this is interesting [Laughs]. Here we go.'"
Copeland added, "I landed the way I was planning to land. I just figured I'd land, and then I'll roll backward, which is what I did. And I still didn't fully know the extent of what had happened. I figured a bone bruise. I got up and ran, heard and felt a click, and went, 'Hmm, interesting. Ok, I can get through this. It's no big deal.'"
"We finished it off, and by the time I got to the back and was starting to go to the trainer's room, I was like, this might be a little more than what I was thinking. There's no grand reasoning for it whatsoever. I just got a cement head sometimes."
As for how his recovery is going, Copeland didn't share a specific timeline for his return but it does sound like it's slow going for the veteran pro wrestler. Despite that, it does sound like he's doing well after surgery.
"It feels really good. I got the surgery. I guess it was June 1, by the time I finally got the surgery done. So I guess yesterday was three months. I’ve never broken my leg before, so I didn’t know what that entails or what that entailed. With my Achilles, it was a process. This is not that which is good, because the Achilles, I was working eight hours a day on that thing. It became a full-time job and I got back in six months. But it was a lot of grinding of teeth. This isn’t that more than anything."
"It’s trying to get the power back and flexibility from bringing your toes to your knee. That’s the last area that doesn’t want to go yet because the plate goes down to the ankle because it was a lower fracture. It was a lower tibia fracture, so the plate butts up against that ankle bone. I think that’ll be what I need to get through in order to be able to get all of that power back. I don’t know what a timeframe is. I don’t know any of that. I know that now I can walk, get in the ring, and move around a little bit, but I still feel the deficiency. So, I know I still have some work to do to return to where I need to be."
Needless to say, we wish Copeland a speedy recovery.