Christian Says He Regrets Not Changing His Name After Splitting With Edge As A Tag Team

Former WWE Superstar Christian recently spoke to Corey Graves on his After The Bell podcast, and among the topics covered was his time as a singles competitor. While he never found the same level of success as Edge after their tag team run ended in 2001, he still became a breakout star and even won the World Heavyweight Championship. However, Christian admits to finding the transition a difficult one.

"Yeah, I mean, it was, it was tough. I had a tough time, when I became a singles wrestler," he admitted. "I really did have a tough time transitioning because there’s a different mindset. It really is. I was thinking like a tag team guy because as a part of a team? Part of your ego has to go away, because you can’t have an individual ego in the team to really make a team work. You can’t have any visions of being like ‘I’m the main guy in this team.’ You can’t be like that, you have to be equals and I felt like we [Edge & Christian] had that."

He elaborated on that, explaining that, "When I stepped away I very much had the mindset of still being a tag team guy. So when I was trying to envision matches and piece things together? I still very much thought that way. And I put a lot of pressure on myself, maybe too much pressure. I was having a hard time adjusting, I was not confident. When once your confidence goes away? It’s tough."

Interestingly, he believes that a name change could have helped his career in the long run as he remained too closely associated with his tag team past. "I had a big opportunity with the Intercontinental Championship. I think back to when the tag team spilt up, I don’t think I did myself any favours by not really changing the Christian part of Edge and Christian. I still came out as a guy that look like Christian from E&C. I missed an opportunity there to change that part of me out and be different and to start to be accepted as something different outside of of that."

Christian was never really utilised as well as he should have been in WWE (his successful main event run in TNA proves that), but he definitely deserves to be remembered as one of the all-time greats in the company.