Edge was the most recent guest of Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast and “The (Returning) Rated-R Superstar” detailed his experience of filming his WrestleMania 36 match against Randy Orton in front of an empty audience. Edge and Orton had to call an audible hours before the day of shooting. He believes that if done properly, that having no audience can still work in a wrestling environment.
“To me the story is always, it’s the steak, and if the story’s there you can do it without an audience. Sure there’s challenges don’t get me wrong and you do feed off of it with an adrenaline and things like that and I do think that an audience can take something and make it better just purely by their reaction and how invested they are and I think an audience at home does feed off of that, but this is the separate circumstances we have. This is what we have to work with and we have to make it work.”
Edge touched upon the criticism that the 40-minute match has received and despite that, he’s really proud of what he and Orton accomplished. A certain legend thought that the vibe of a fight was excellently executed.
“When I have Bret Hart call me, and tell me that he loved it because it looked like a fight, well I don’t care what anybody else says from that point on because his opinion to me has more weight that absolutely everyone anywhere. Nobody is going to top his opinion to me and if he liked it, and he thought it was a fight, good. Mission accomplished.”
Edge is all about the optimistic side of things.
“I focus on positives and the fact that after nine years that I was able to claw my way back here and I’m healthy enough to do this and go forty minutes and take a DDT in a bed of a truck with a triple fusion. Once I got out of quarantine, I hugged Beth, I hugged the girls and nothing’s gonna dull my shine at this point. I’m on top of the world.”
As for the other matches on the card, Edge was a huge fan of The Boneyard Match between Undertaker and AJ Styles.
“It had elements of camp and I love that. It’s wrestling. There has to be camp involved, but beyond that, Taker’s got chops man. Like he’s got acting chops.”
“I was texting a couple people and I said, ‘This is like watching Undertaker as Clint Eastwood,'” added Graves
“Yeah, exactly! Or like Mike from Better Call Saul. Like, he’s good.”
You can listen to the entire episode of After The Bell below:
