In an interview with the Asbury Park Press, Edge spoke about WWE getting a live audience for WrestleMania and how important it is for the fans to be involved with the product. Here are the highlights:
On the return of a live audience:
“Our audience, it’s our phantom limb,” Edge said. “Without them there, it doesn’t feel quite the same yet. It’s not going to feel the way it’s supposed to until we get there that night and you actually hear a rumble and a roar out there from an audience. Then it will become fully real to me, I think.”
On how the WWE was hurt by a lack of fans:
“Right now, as a company, we’re all kind of flying blind because we have these stories and we have this creative but we don’t know what the actual reaction is going to be. When we walk out there, who knows how they’re going to react? An audience has never seen this (version of) Roman Reigns, and I think this is the Roman Reigns they’ve wanted to see for a long time. So how are they going to react? We don’t know. How are they going to react to me at this stage and kind of flipping the switch on finding the old Rated-R Superstar? Who knows. I think the bottom line is you’ve just got to hope they react. And I’d like to think, as starved as we all are just for entertainment and a walk back into whatever our new normal is, I’d like to think that’s going to be a pretty ravenous crowd, reaction-wise.”
On why the Universal title match this year is special:
“Here’s three guys that have been told they’re not gonna do this again, and here we are. I think that’s a really crazy aspect of this that isn’t really part of the narrative of the story, but you can’t look past it. It speaks to bigger issues — to me it speaks to not giving up. It speaks to having tenacity and determination and not just blindly accepting something and (instead) going, ‘Wait a minute, hold on.’ And I think all three people that portray these characters have that mentality.”
