Edge On His Initial Reluctance To Wrestle For WWE In Saudi Arabia
WWE Hall of Famer Edge has admitted that he was initially not keen to travel to Saudi Arabia for last month's Crown Jewel pay-per-view.
Edge told The Kids on the Escalator podcast that the idea of Jessica Carr officiating his Hell in a Cell match against Seth Rollins swayed his mind, as he felt there was something special about about Carr having control over two men in Saudi Arabia.
"I wasn't too keen on going, I'll be perfectly honest," Edge said. "But then as we talked and they said, 'We need it there,' I said, 'Okay. Well let's get Jess [to] ref there' and not knowing how that — if we'd even be able to but I just love the idea of a woman being in control of two men in that country, and if it flew over a lot of heads, whatever but, for me, I can come back to my girls and tell them one day, 'I went over there but, I think we did something pretty cool' and again, she was just right there for everything, just not in any way overwhelmed by the moment, just stood up to the challenge. It was really cool to see."
Edge revealed that he and senior official Charles Robinson gave Carr a test run at SummerSlam, which ultimately led to her refereeing Rollins vs. Edge II at Madison Square Garden.
"Yeah, you know, I had SummerSlam coming up with Seth [Rollins] and Charles Robinson wasn't gonna be there and I'm kind of at a stage in my career where I'm a little picky when it comes to who refs, just because there's a comfort level, there's a — I don't know," Edge recalled. "You just find a zone together and you take that out of the equation, that's one less thing as a talent that I have to concern myself with because I know that person's gonna be there. But Charles wasn't gonna be at SummerSlam and I talked to him, I said, 'What do you think about Jess? Should we give her a shot? Because I've watched her and she's good. Let's give her a high-profile match and see how she does. What do you think?' And he was like, 'Yeah, I think that'd be a great idea.'
"So, we kind of took a test run at SummerSlam and man, she is so confident and so — she's just really, really good in there and wasn't shy, wasn't timid. She took control of the situation and I always appreciate when somebody does that so, we had MSG and said, 'Well, I think you gotta do part two there kiddo' and then when I had-had the discussion, they asked me about kind of blowing off the entire story in Saudi Arabia."
As noted earlier, Carr recently detailed her experience of refereeing Edge vs. Rollins III in Saudi Arabia, and the circumstances that led to Edge handpicking her to officiate the match.
H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.