“You can put me in a cage, on a ladder, in any kind of match, and I will persevere. I will find a way.”
“Wrestling is just a different beast. There is no off-season in WWE. It’s week in and week out.”
“I’m the Rated-R Superstar. I do what I want when I want.”
“Every tattoo on my body symbolizes a phase in my career.”
“When I was a kid, I said this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a wrestler.”
“I am an entertainment juggernaut.”
“I read The Flash. I read Green Lantern. I loved Batman.”
“In Canada, it’s beer, hockey, and then everything else.”
“Sometimes, taking a break and going somewhere else and, almost, for both parties, absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Being the Rated-R Superstar, I have to live up to the reputation.”
“I greatly appreciate that people would like to see me have one more match or comeback or, ‘Daniel Bryan got cleared, so why can’t you?’ I will never be cleared. Mine is a completely different injury. He had neck issues, but it wasn’t his neck issues that retired him, actually. It was the concussion issues.”
“I have stupid neck. Look it up. You can look up ‘stupid neck,’ and it’ll probably be a picture of my neck. Just do me a favor. Look it up, and you’ll realize that the WWE will never clear me to compete again.”
“With Undertaker and I, we only had one singles match leading up to WrestleMania XXIV, and we realized we had something. We knew going into WrestleMania it was going to be cool. And it was.”
“Every time I get an injury or suffer from a personal setback, that’s exactly what I do: I persevere.”
“A guy like Bray Wyatt, he could easily have played something in ‘True Detective.’”
“Everyone realizes when it comes to fight scenes, that’s gonna be my wheelhouse.”
“One thing about wrestling, it keeps you humble.”
“Whatever Paul Giamatti plays, Paul Heyman could also read for it.”
“The only time I have exchanged gear with someone was with The Undertaker at WrestleMania 24. I gave him my kick-pads and my tights from that, and I got his gloves. It is pretty cool. I am glad I got that memory.”
“I saved everything, all my gear over the years: my trench coats and stuff that I have saved. It is all packed away nicely and neatly in vacuum-sealed bags and all that stuff.”
“Hulk Hogan was my reason for getting into the business. He was this larger-than-life entity.”
“I had no aspirations after wrestling. I truly just assumed I would retire, grow a big beard, sit on my deck, and figure out what was next. If it was nothing, I was OK with that.”
“Once the second season of ‘Haven’ rolled around, I really started to attack this acting thing and finally admitted, ‘OK, I’m an actor now. This is what I’m doing. This is my new career.’”
“I like to be doing something creative.”
“One of the things that I wanted to do post-‘Haven’ is go after some shows I was a fan of already, and ‘Vikings’ was on the list.”
“I think WrestleMania 17, everything’s subjective, but if it’s me, that’s the best card and the best pay-per-view ever and just because of the totality of it. From opening match to last match, everything delivered.”
“I did those two TV matches in WCW against Kevin Sullivan and Meng, and within five minutes of walking into that locker room, I was like, ‘I don’t want to be here.’ I could tell this is not the place for me. And the dream was still WWF and getting there.”
“I’m the luckiest man on the planet.”
“I did two matches for WCW, for ‘Saturday Night’ and for ‘WorldWide.’ Scott D’Amore was booking the extra talent. I remember I was really torn about it. I was like, ‘Hmm… I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to just be an extra guy. I want so much more than that,’ but I was flat broke, and it was 500 bucks.”
“To me, the best part of coming up in that, kind of the last era before it went that way with the FCWs or NXTs, kind of the farm system, is that, you know, wrestling Jimmy Valiant in front of 10 people in Cleveland. We didn’t touch. I think we did two things, but we were out there for 20 minutes.”
“I’m on the Asuka train.”
“With WWE, it’s a massive machine, and you will air in 120 countries and have action figures and towels.”
“As glamorous as WWE may seem, you’re probably eating at a Waffle House at 1 in the morning, and you’re probably going to see the Ring of Honor guys there, too.”
“I fought the social media thing kicking and screaming. It can demystify. But it’s a different world now, and that is part of what we, as humans, have developed: right, wrong, good, bad, I don’t know.”
“Part of me has always been a private person.”
“When I was growing up, I had three channels, and I didn’t know what happened in the Philippines instantly if it happened. Now you can be on the Internet and find out what’s going on in Zimbabwe. It’s changed.”
“People don’t look at the broader picture a lot of the time.”
“Generally, there’s a lot of ad-lib involved with live TV and things like that, whereas with acting in front of the camera, it was, if you screwed up a line, well, you’ve got another take, and you also had a script to be able to study, so it wasn’t all ad-lib and flying by the seat of your pants, which I like both aspects, actually.”
“There’s not too much Edge in Adam Copeland, but there’s a little bit of my sarcasm and my sense of humor, I guess, but I’m not a sleazy, raving maniac like the character of Edge could be.”
“I always looked at it as, the character of Edge gives me complete free reign with no borders, where you can get away with anything, just a complete… no social qualities, no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”
“I love Nakamura, but it’s a transition for anybody who comes to WWE.”
“Sometimes styles don’t translate. Rey Mysterio was a master of doing that. No matter where he went, Rey could make his style adapt. But not everyone is Rey Mysterio.”
“I got put through a ladder by Jeff Hardy at WrestleMania 23, had bruises from the ladder rungs across my back, but I was back the next night. I did the hardcore match with Mick Foley at WrestleMania 22, went through a flaming table, and had thumbtacks in my back, but I was out there the next night. That mentality does get ingrained in you.”
“One of the only things that bothered me with WWE and being on every week was blowing off so many great storylines so fast, just out of necessity.”
“Imagine you put Brock Lesnar/Samoa Joe and Roman Reigns/John Cena on WrestleMania. Sold.”
“For me, Edge was just a character.”
“I’ve always just introduced myself as Adam Copeland. I never really thought too much about it.”
“I think if I would have wrestled another five or seven years, I would have regrets.”
“I really enjoyed working with Rey Mysterio when we were up against Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit and The Guerreros.”
“Chris Jericho and I were really excited about teaming together, but we didn’t get to sink our teeth into what we could have done as a team. We really wanted to throw it back to the glory days of Pat Patterson and Ray Stevens. We were committed, we were coming up with team moves, and all of the things were made to work.”
“Do I know A.J. Styles and I could have an amazing match? Seth Rollins and I could tear it down and have a classic? Yeah, if it were me at 35, not me at 45. And not me at 45 not having stepped in a ring for eight years.”
“Wrestling is a very demanding thing. But you’re also your own manager. You book your own rental cars, you book your own hotels. You carry your own bags. Your day begins as soon as you wake up, and it ends when you get to bed.”
“I think the best promo guys make it sound like it’s not a promo.”
“One of the amazing things about acting now is that you can try different things and have choices.”
“I’m sure I’ll get lambasted for this, but I don’t get the Asuka thing. Like, I really don’t. She’s fine, and she’s solid, but I don’t know. Even going back to the NXT stuff, I’ve watched it. I don’t know. I just never really bought in.”
“I can’t physically put someone over, but I can feel very confident in my ability to tell a story through a promo.”
“I’ve always said this: Edge is purely a character.”
“I always hated that ‘You Think You Know Me’ music because it never fit me and what I actually listen to.”
“My whole idea, to me, is if you’re a heel in wrestling, you should not having a band playing for when you come out and people will react in a positive way.”
“I never had concussion issues. What I have is cervical spinal stenosis.”
“You always wonder what’s going to happen in a Brock Lesnar match, but if you see Brock every week, it’s not as special.”
“I think The Singh Brothers – I know them as Harv and Gurv – they’re doing great.”
“The way I look at it is I had to retire as world champion with my last match at WrestleMania.”
“I was never stupid with my money, because I grew up without it. So when I started to make some, I was like, ‘Okay, first rule of thumb, I’m not buying it unless I’ve got the money to buy it,’ so I have no debt.”
“I own three homes. I drive a Jeep. I’m cool with that.”
“AJ Styles, he is very well established, very well known. He had a name that was very well known. I would think, outside of WWE, his might be the most outside-recognized wrestling name in the world. Samoa Joe as well. He could have debuted straight to Raw or SmackDown, absolutely.”
“’Vikings’ is a very physical, tough show. If you see battle scenes, it’s us doing it. There are so many similar physical elements to WWE.”
“From a backstage perspective, one of the things I always tried to do in wrestling was maintain that I was Adam. Edge was a character.”
“There are elements of myself in every character I do, just because you take from your real life experiences and sprinkle those into your character.”
“Edge was part of my fascination with KISS and Cheap Trick and Queen, mixed with wrestling.”
“In no way are King Booker and Queen Sharmell the power couple in WWE.”
“I am the man that everyone is compared to in this business.”
“For me, body art is all about expression; it’s a lifestyle and can serve as a reminder that when my career is done, I’ll have a story to tell on my body. And it will be my story of my life on my body.”
“Two friends and I decided to get tattoos of different animals. My one friend got a bulldog. My other friend got a bull, I think, and then I got a shark. Two years later, there was a cartoon called ‘Street Sharks,’ and by happenstance, it looked eerily reminiscent of my tattoo. Actually, it was identical.”
“I can adapt my game to anyone, whether it’s Ric Flair, Chris Benoit, or Batista.”
“It was a no-brainer for me to go on ‘Mind of Mencia,’ I think. And actually, it was a lot of fun. It was a really good time.”
“I can excel in any situation, and like I’ve said, I’m not pro-WWE or anti-ECW – I’m pro-Edge. I don’t care about promotions; I care about myself, plain and simple.”
“I wasn’t a Superman guy – I didn’t like the invincible superhero who always wins. Who can get behind someone like that?”
“I liked The Trickster because he was The Flash’s Joker. I liked Solomon Grundy, too.”
“Obviously, being WWE Champion was my main goal in life, but when I started acting, the main thing I wanted to do was play a superhero or supervillain.”
“The Rated-R Superstar was usually a vile and horrible human being who had some moments of being a good guy.”
“I’m 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, which is average size in WWE, but in the world of television and movies, it’s huge.”
“When I was on ‘Haven,’ my nickname was ‘Sasquatch.’”
“I was one of the innovators of the TLC Match; some would arguably say that I am the master of the Ladder Match.”
“I am not a video game guy at all. Once it got past Super Mario Bros. and past two buttons, they lost me. I was like, ‘I do not have the abilities to be able to do this. It doesn’t work.’”
“It was never my intention to be an actor, and I don’t know if I’ll ever call myself an actor because I’ve always said that would be a slap in the face to proper actors, but it’s fun, and thankfully, I’ve had the luxury in my adult life that anything I’ve done has been fun.”
“I did what I always wanted to do. Wrestling. – conquered that. Can’t physically do it anymore. So now what? Maybe I’ll paint. Maybe I’ll write another book. Yeah, I’ll try this acting thing and now actually concentrate on it and try and get better at it and take classes and get coaching and give it a shot.”
“That’s one of the things I always tried to do as champ. If you saw me at house shows, I was going to make you think I was going down. If I was wrestling Kane, I could lose. I’m wrestling Batista, I could lose. I’m wrestling Big Show, Undertaker, you name it, I could lose.”
“I read to my kids every night.”
“I had a long career that started when I was 17. I wrestled for 20 years, so people forget how long I actually wrestled for.”
“It’s interesting: I never got stressed before wrestling matches. I always felt completely confident that I had done everything I could do, all my mental preparations when I sat down and envisioned the match, so I never felt stressed.”
“Wrestling has to be more aggressive. It has to be bigger; it has to translate to the back of a football stadium. With acting, when that camera is up close, they can see your nose hairs twitch, and you have to pull back everything for it not to look clownish. There is that different mindset.”
“There were a lot of surreal, amazing moments during my career that I’m very lucky to have had.”
“I don’t consider myself this amazing thespian.”
“I wrestled my guys growing up. I’ve wrestled with Hulk Hogan. I’ve wrestled against Shawn Michaels. I’ve wrestled against Ric Flair.”
“I think Ric Flair is a complete freak, and I mean that in a good way.”
“Being at Wrestlemania 6, I remember being completely in shock and dumbfounded when Hulk Hogan missed the leg drop and Warrior hit the splash and got the 1-2-3. I was devastated.”
“I think deep down inside, most of the bad guys want to get cheered – I don’t. I want absolutely everybody in there to hate me, and that’s the mentality you need to have to be a successful heel.”
“’Vikings’ has been so many different challenges, and some of that is, at times, you have to be big and imposing and violent and vicious, and then you have be pulled back and withdrawn and just more layers and more time to portray those layers, too.”
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