In a conversation with the MCW Cast, and according to POST Wrestling, “Big Money” Matt Hardy spoke about Edge and just how possible it could have been to have him over in AEW.
Of course Edge made a triumphant return to professional wrestling after almost a decade out of it due to serious neck injuries he sustained (he had a triple-fusion neck surgery), and despite them, he won the 2021 Royal Rumble…a win that led to a string of matches throughout the year which have culminated in a very interesting feud with Seth Rollins still transpiring on SmackDown.
But it was in the interviews featured in the WWE Documentary series WWE: 24, that Edge spoke of the very real possibility of his almost ending up at a competing wrestling company of WWE’s, as he’d had an offer and he wanted to ask Vince McMahon first, but Vince opened the door for him to return to WWE—the medical examiners having cleared him—which is now obvious.
But what if?
Matt hardy answers those questions for us in his comments:
“…I think if (WWE) hadn’t have cleared Edge and let him wrestle, he was going to end up at AEW…So they kind of had to go, ‘Oh. If we don’t want him to go, we got to let him have his way.’…”
Via MCW Cast /POST Wrestling
Hardy also spoke about AEW’s reintroducing the term ‘wrestling’ to the vocabulary of the wrestlers and the fans, as for so many years that has been a watered down term, WWE referring to their product as ‘sports entertainment’ to the chagrin of many, Matt included.
“…It’s great to hear (the ‘wrestling’ term) used because that is what it is. That is what it will always be, and you know, there was just — for so long, Vince just kind of saw that as a dirty word. ‘That word is beneath us. Let’s do something else’, and I get that and I can respect that he has a vision and he has this mold of this project he wants to create…And it’s sports-entertainment, it’s larger than life. And you can’t hate him for doing that because he has contributed so much to the pro wrestling industry. And when it’s all said and done, at its core, it’s going to be pro wrestling because you can change the name, you can change the way it’s done a little bit, but at the end of the day, it is pro wrestling…”
Via MCW Cast /Wrestling Inc (Transcription)
Jake “The Snake” Roberts health concerns
As of late, we haven’t really seen all that much of this in-ring legend. He is the manager of Lance Archer in AEW quite obviously, and has been for quite some time since the two were paired up, so to speak in March of 2020, but as was seen on Rampage last night on TNT, Jake Roberts was not with Lance, who came out with Minoru Suzuki to battle Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston in a great non-sanctioned match that ended in a loss for Archer and Suzuki.
Roberts’ absence is attributed to some recent health problems, as has been reported by webisjericho.com. It was in 2020 that he received a diagnosis detailing a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He has apparently been in need of a wheelchair in recent weeks and needs an oxygen tank to properly breathe.
Jake Roberts started wrestling in 1974, and is perhaps most famous for his run in WWE (WWF at the time), in which as part of his gimmick, he brought a snake to the ring and would have it attack his opponents—the most famous instance of this is when he had the snake actually bite Randy Savage on an episode of WWF Superstars of Wrestling back in 1991—November 23rd to be exact.
His battle with prescription medication, narcotics and other issues have been well-documented over the years. But like anyone with great inner strength who’s ever been down, he picked himself up and turned it all around, he having returned to WWE in 2005, then again sporadically over the years until 2014. It was in 2019 that he signed with AEW.
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We hope for him a speedy recovery and a return to the ring beside Lance Archer, “The Murderhawk Monster,” where he belongs.
