WWE Hall of Famer Edge did an interview with ESPN where he spoke about a mountain bike accident that led to him making a return to in-ring action.
The former WWE Champion will face Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing Match at WrestleMania 36. Here are the highlights:
The bike wreck:
“IT STARTED DAWNING on me that this could be a possibility when Sheamus came to town, and we were filming an episode of his Celtic Warrior workout show. He wants to do different challenging things that he hasn’t done before, and I love to mountain bike. … In the process of doing that — this stupid competitive thing — I’m flying down a mountain, I hit this one jump, and I wiped out.
“It’s a pretty gnarly wipeout. I was going probably 20, 25 mph, landed on these stones, rolled right up to my feet. But I’m fine. I was all cut up, but my neck was fine. Couple that with doing all of these fight scenes over the years on sets — some pretty physical stuff, especially with ‘Vikings‘ — and I thought, ‘OK, I feel really good.'”
Realizing he could return:
“My family doctor just said, ‘Let’s get some pictures on it, just see where you’re at, and we’ll see a spine specialist here in Asheville.’ [I] did that, met with [the specialist]. He said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing. Obviously, it’s working for you,’ and that’s when I floated out the, ‘But what about wrestling?’ That’s when we started to realize this could actually happen.”
In-ring training:
“I talked to [Triple H], and I said, ‘I can’t go to a ring anywhere because people will start seeing me. I can’t go to the PC.’ So they sent me a ring. I got a warehouse space, and I set up a ring and basically had my own personal ‘Field of Dreams,’ and I just got in there and got to work. Thankfully, I’m married to another Hall of Famer who can pick up and body slam me, which you can’t say for a lot of wives. The Revival, they both live in Asheville, so they’d come, and they’d get in there with me, and they’d put me through my paces.
“I was keeping up with them. I wasn’t tired, and I wasn’t sore, and I thought, ‘OK, this is going to happen, and this is going to happen at a level that I wanted.’ I didn’t want to come back and be anything less than what I was. I’m going to have to work differently. I’m going to have different limitations … I still want to be able to go in there and be able to go half an hour.”
