AEW's Adam Copeland Details How & Why WWE's Judgment Day Turned On Him

In a shocking turn of events, Judgment Day's Finn Balor, Rhea Ripley, and Damian Priest betrayed Edge on the "WWE Raw" following Hell in a Cell 2022 after the "Rated-R Superstar" introduced Balor as the newest member of the faction. At the time, the outcome led fans to question whether WWE prematurely pulled the trigger on the betrayal angle, seeing as Edge had established Judgment Day only a few months prior to being booted out. It turns out that even Adam Copeland was not thrilled with the way the storyline panned out, revealing on "Talk is Jericho" that the original plan was for Edge to continue as the leader of Judgment Day for at least another year — until WWE's creative team called an audible and switched things up. 

"When we were doing Judgment Day, the plan was Balor joins, and about a year later, they all turn on me," Copeland said. "I get to Hell in a Cell and it was like, 'No, we're changing everything and we're speeding up that year-long process and he's joining tomorrow and turning tomorrow.'" Reflecting on the turn, Edge is convinced that the faction would have benefited from his tutelage, and the abrupt change in creative plans got him to start questioning WWE's intentions for him. "[Judgment Day] was just starting to find some legs, but it was going to be swimming upstream with me in it — it really was. I started to have that realization of, like, 'I don't think they're gonna get where they need to get to with me in this thing.'"

As part of his commitment to making the Judgment Day storyline work, Edge got 30 custom suits made, cut his hair, got new theme music, and even changed up his in-ring style. However, by his own admission, WWE's creative team wasn't sold. "I tried changing everything and realized that, at this stage, it's not what they want."