Adam Copeland says AEW currently feels more like the Attitude Era than WWE does, because nobody is telling him exactly what to do before he walks through the curtain.
Copeland was speaking to Ariel Helwani, and the question that prompted it was about the speech he gave on Dynamite in April 2024, when he addressed the locker room directly. That came days after CM Punk had spoken to Helwani about the culture inside the company, and Copeland’s remarks were widely read as a response.
He was open about why he thinks he was hired.
“I knew, in being hired, that at some point one of my jobs would be to try and dial in a locker room. I’ve been put in a position to lead before and have success. I assumed that was one of the reasons to bring me over as well.”
His view is that the room has changed in the last year.
“Right now, this last year has turned the corner in terms of everybody pulling in the same direction. Once you can do that and get a few creative elements of the show that start to hit, everything gets dialed in. I feel that’s where we are right now, and that’s always fun.”
Then the comparison.
“What’s amazing about AEW too is just the freedom to explore, and try things. And it’s much more like the Attitude Era in that regard. Because a lot of times when we were out there during the Attitude Era, it’s like, there might be a plan, but there might not be too. Or you might be figuring that out as you go.”
That is a specific claim rather than a general one. Copeland came up in that period, debuting in WWF in 1998 and spending the following years in the environment he is describing, and his point is about how much was settled in advance rather than about the tone of the content.
His account of his final WWE years is the opposite.
“My experience by the end with WWE was overproduced, overrehearsed, over-everything, and they kept handcuffs on you to where you couldn’t really explore too much. That’s not the case with AEW, and that, again, is fun.”
Copeland is 52 and has now been with AEW for close to three years, having debuted at WrestleDream in October 2023 by interrupting a beatdown Christian Cage was carrying out. He is a former TNT Champion and won the AEW World Tag Team Championship with Cage at Double or Nothing in May. The two of them defend the titles against the Young Bucks at All In on August 30, which puts him in a stadium main-card match at 52 in the company he says he will finish in.
Cage is his oldest friend in the business and the man he came up alongside in the era he is invoking.
He also told Helwani that without AEW, he would probably have stopped altogether. His WWE run had reached its natural end, and he describes the choice in front of him at that point as being between joining Tony Khan’s company and retiring. He debuted at WrestleDream in October 2023 rather than walking away.
That makes the decision he has since arrived at more straightforward than it might have been. Copeland says he will not be going back to WWE, and intends to finish his career where he is.
“I know that may disappoint a lot of people, but I love it there,” he said. “I love the company. I love the attitude, the exuberance.”
He also told Helwani there was one WWE return he would have taken. Copeland said Tony Khan would have let him go back to face John Cena during Cena’s retirement tour, and that the obstacle was on the other side, saying one place did not want it to happen. He never pursued it, on the assumption that it was never going to happen.
Copeland spent the best part of two decades with WWE across two runs, is a WWE Hall of Famer, and was inducted in 2012 alongside the retirement he thought was permanent. The second WWE run he is describing was, by any external measure, a success. Copeland returned at the 2020 Royal Rumble after nine years out following a neck injury that had forced him to retire in 2011, and main evented WrestleMania 37 in a triple threat with Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan.
He worked programs with Randy Orton, Seth Rollins and Finn Balor before leaving in 2023. His last WWE match was a win over Sheamus on SmackDown in Toronto in August 2023.
