Edge's Retirement: A Complete Career Retrospective (Part I)

As a fan growing up, I did not idolize Major League Baseball stars or National Football League players. The men and women on the pages of DC and Marvel comic books were not the heroes I looked towards for inspiration.

My heroes were the WWE Superstars who infiltrated my imagination on every episode of Raw, then Smackdown, and the occasional pay-per-view event. As I hit my teenage years, a new, young energized Superstar hit the scene.

He was an enigma at first but would quickly develop into one of the most entertaining, at times controversial, stars in the entire world of sports-entertainment.

Edge quickly became my favorite wrestler and a performer I had no problem calling my idol. Writing a career retrospective after only 13 years was something I never imagined doing.

The announcement of Edge’s retirement on the April 11 edition of WWE’s Monday Night Raw program brings to a close a career that more than met the expectations set for it when WWE signed the Toronto native to a contract in 1996.

During the span of a 13-year career, Edge enjoyed incredible highs and endured horrendous lows. At times, his personal life was a hotter topic than his professional life. But he grew, matured, and developed into one of the great Superstars of all time.

Edge made his television debut on the June 22, 1998, edition of Raw. After weeks of vignettes hyping his arrival, a very-real injury to his opponent Jose Estrada, that abruptly ended the match, nearly derailed his career before it ever got started.

From there, the only appearances the young, enigmatic star made on WWE television were split-second shots of him sitting amongst the fans in attendance.

That would change as WWE began their trek down the "Highway to Hell" for that year’s SummerSlam spectacular.

Throughout the summer of 1998, Sable had become the WWE’s biggest female attraction. She had split from real-life husband "Marvelous" Marc Mero and was engaged in a heated rivalry with Mero’s new manager and on-air flame, Jacqueline.

A mixed tag team match was booked for SummerSlam, with Mero and Jacqueline teaming to meet Sable and a partner of her choosing. The partner remained a mystery until Sable entered the famed Madison Square Garden and introduced the world to Edge.

After a spirited, impressive performance on his first pay-per-view broadcast, the young star and his beautiful partner left the event victorious.

Over the fall and winter of ‘98, the WWE fan base was introduced to a new character. Gangrel was a mysterious vampire who had entered WWE and immediately set his sights on Edge.

A storied history between the two was teased. They fought on several occasions but neither gained a distinctive advantage over the other.

At the Breakdown pay-per-view in September, Gangrel revealed Edge’s brother Christian to the entire world.

Eventually, Edge gave into Gangrel and joined his former tormentor and his brother in forming the new trio known simply as "The Brood."

The Brood spent the remaining fall and early spring as mid-card talent, working multiple-man tag team matches against and with the Ministry of Darkness, a faction formed around the ever-evolving, more Satanic Undertaker.

When a rift between Edge and Christian and Brood leader Gangrel led to the young "brothers" breaking out on their own, a rivalry between two young tag teams would go on to revolutionize the sport and inject the WWE with a shot of young energy and adrenaline.

When Edge and Christian ditched Gangrel, the vampire warrior recruited two new minions. Matt and Jeff Hardy, enhancement talent for WWE for the better part of one-half of a decade, exploded onto the scene in a series of matches against Edge and Christian.

The four young stars, slowly getting over with the audience, set the tag team division on fire with performances that were hard to top, even by the main event stars that had become household names.

The matches at King of the Ring 1999 and the Tag Team Turmoil match at SummerSlam 1999 proved to be only a microscopic glimpse of the magic these men could perform if given the opportunity.

At No Mercy, the Hardys and Edge and Christian snatched the opportunity and catapulted themselves into the upper echelon of sports entertainment.

The tag team ladder match at the 1999 No Mercy pay-per-view remains the most recognizable star-making performance in WWE history. Unlike any single match before and any after, one solitary performance elevated four up-and-coming athletes from obscurity to instant recognition.

They performed amazing stunts once believed to be unimaginable and set a bar many believed to be unbreakable. Despite losing the match, Edge and Christian received a standing ovation from the crowd in Cleveland, an ovation that continued in State College, Pa., the next night.

As Edge and his fellow show-stealers gained traction with the WWE audience, former ECW stars Bubba Ray and D’Von Dudley entered the company and added a new dimension to the tag team division.

At Wrestlemania 2000, following weeks of build-up, the three teams did battle in the very first Triangle Ladder Match for the tag team titles.

Like the match at No Mercy, the young stars stole the show, overshadowing everything before it and everything after it.

What followed were a series of matches between the three teams that continued to elevate them and create new opportunities for teams, whereas those opportunities were previously nonexistent.

At SummerSlam 2000 and Wrestlemania X-7, the teams graduated from being exciting mid-card acts to being headliners, in two of the bigger matches at either of the events.

Edge, Christian, the Hardys, and the Dudleys took their place on marketing materials, alongside mega-stars such as The Rock, Triple H, and Stone Cold Steve Austin.

As the months wore on, and WWE purchased the opposition WCW, the repetitive storylines involving the three teams began to wear on the fans.

They wants more. And in September 2001, Edge began his slow ascent to the top of the singles ranks in WWE.

Edge and Christian had done all that was possible. As multiple-time tag team champions, they dominated the tag division to the point that they ran out of viable competition. In June of 2001, Edge entered, and won, the King of the Ring tournament. Then, at SummerSlam of that year, he defeated Lance Storm to become Intercontinental Champion.

All the while, Christian stood in the background, becoming more and more jealous of his older brother. The split occurred in early September and at that month’s Unforgiven pay-per-view, Christian won his first Intercontinental Championship. A month later, at No Mercy, Edge wrestled it away in a Ladder Match.

What should have been a hot, blood-feud between Edge and his brother instead fizzled in the midst of a failing WCW/ECW Alliance angle. They would go on their separate paths following the conclusion of the rivalry and would not meet up again for several years.

A win over Rhyno netted Edge his first, and only, United States Championship. Heading into the Survivor Series in 2001, it appeared that the future "Rated R Superstar" was on a collision course with Test.

The two young, blond Canadians would battle over unifying the Intercontinental and United States Championships.

A hard-fought, high-impact match between the two future "next big things" concluded with Edge picking up the win and giving the WWE control of the two title belts.

A spirited-yet-underwhelming feud with William Regal over the Intercontinental Championship led to Edge dropping the title to the sadistic Brit and seemingly left him on a directionless path heading into Wrestlemania X-8, which would emanate from his hometown of Toronto. Fortunately for the young, emerging star, another major talent was left without a match on the big show.

The match between Booker T and Edge at Wrestlemania X-8 has, perhaps, the most preposterous back-story of any rivalry this side of the Katie Vick fiasco.

In the weeks prior to the the March 17, 2002 event, it became apparent that Booker T was hoping to branch out into the acting world and his first chance at exposure was in a Japanese shampoo commercial.

When it came time to audition for the role, however, Booker was informed that fellow WWE Superstar Edge had stolen the spot from him.

A feud...over a Japanese shampoo commercial...culminated in a match on the biggest stage the industry had to offer. Edge would win the once-and-done match and the rivalry was suddenly dropped.

The Brand Extension of 2002, which saw the entire WWE split into two separate entities (Raw and Smackdown) in an attempt at creating competition inside the world’s largest sports-entertainment company, saw the beginning of a massive push for Edge.

Drafted to the Smackdown brand, he was relied on heavily to be the number three babyface, just behind Triple H and "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan.

And to further cement his spot as one of the faces of the new brand, he was booked in a star-making program with Olympic gold medal winner, Kurt Angle.

In the weeks leading to their match at Backlash, Edge consistently one-upped Angle in both comedy spots and was even responsible for the now-infamous "You Suck" chants that greeted Angle as he entered the arena week in and week out.

Backlash proved to be Edge’s best solo performance yet and reaffirmed WWE’s decision to push the young Canadian as the next breakout star.

Despite his loss to Angle at Backlash, Edge looked significantly better and more believable as a "prime time player" in the fans eyes than he had prior to the contest.

The match was such a success that the decision was made to prolong it, leading to another match at the May pay-per-view event, Judgment Day.

This time, however, both Angle and Edge agreed to put their hair on the line in a match where the loser would have their head shaved in front of the entire world.

The match was an intense performance of hold and counter-hold that saw Edge keep up with and counter many of Angle’s trademark maneuvers.

Drama was created with a series of near-falls as the crowd waited, with anxious anticipation as to which star would suffer the humiliation of a public head shaving.

The end of the contest saw Edge finally get his victory over Angle, catapulting him to the top of the Smackdown brand. Fans watched and cheered ferociously as Edge shaved Angle’s head.

A cage match between Edge and Angle served as the blow-off to the rivalry but it also saw Edge suffer what could be considered a momentum-halting shoulder injury.

Following a momentum-slowing shoulder injury, Edge engaged in a weeks-long rivalry with Chris Jericho that, once again, culminated in a steel cage match.

On the July 4 edition of Smackdown, Edge would reenact a boyhood dream, teaming with his idol Hulk Hogan to defeat Billy and Chuck to become WWE Tag Team Champions.

Their reign would not last long as they dropped the gold to the newly-founded team of Christian and Lance Storm at Vengeance, but the memory of holding the gold would serve as a highlight in the young man’s blossoming career.

Rey Mysterio debuted on the Smackdown brand in July 2002. He immediately made an impact and was paired with Edge. While not initially a tag team, the two often were seen running into the squared circle to aid the other during two-, three-, or four-on-one beatdowns at the hands of Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, and Eddie and Chavo Guerrero.

While Rey paired up with Angle for the SummerSlam event, Edge did battle with the elder Guerrero, Eddie.

The match between Edge and Guerrero at SummerSlam was a solid, technically-sound contest but was overshadowed by the return of Shawn Michaels, the elevation of Brock Lesnar, and the birth of a new superstar in Mysterio.

Edge won the match in August but, the next month, at Unforgiven, Guerrero gained a measure of revenge, pinning his rival with a top-rope, sunset power bomb.

With each man holding a win over the other, what would go down as one of the greatest matches in the history of Smackdown was booked.

On the September 26, 2002 edition of Smackdown, Edge and Eddie Guerrero had one of the hardest-hitting, most barbaric No Holds Barred matches of all-time. Along with the gratuitous weapon usage, they brought with them a psychology that could not be topped.

High impact, high-risk maneuvers were exchanged before Edge finished his opponent with the Edgecution from the top of an eight-foot ladder. By the end of the contest, the fans not only cheered Edge but also applauded the effort of his once-hated rival.

Like the TLC matches and the Angle series, Edge had once again seen his star burn brighter than it had before.

The fall of 2002 brought with it a series of matches between six Superstars that would be affectionately dubbed the "Smackdown Six" by Internet fans across the globe.

Paul Heyman, the genius booker of the old ECW company, was positioned as the head booker of the Smackdown program. In Chris Benoit, Kurt Angle, the Guerreros, Edge, and Rey Mysterio, he saw six young stars with the ability to create in-ring masterpieces that no one else in the business could touch.

Each and every week, sometimes in spite of what happened elsewhere on Smackdown, the fans were guaranteed a phenomenal, four star contest out of some mixture of the group. They revolutionized the product at a time where not much good was going on elsewhere.

At the No Mercy pay-per-view in October, Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit teamed to face Edge and Rey Mysterio in the finals of a tournament to declare the very first WWE Tag Team Champions, post-brand extension, of course.

What would result is still considered by many to be one of the greatest tag team contests of all-time and one of the five best matches of the entire 2000’s decade. More than any match on the card, the fans watched in awe as four of the best talents in all of sports-entertainment plied their craft and left the on-lookers wanting more.

Angle and Benoit would score the win but it was clear that Edge and Mysterio would get their rematch.

On the November 7 edition of Smackdown, Edge and Mysterio defeated Angle and Benoit in a Best 2-of-3 Falls match to win the gold. Many considered the match to be on-par with the original and a standard was set.

The intense and always-competitive nature of the "Smackdown Six" proved too much for the new, extremely popular champions to overcome, however, and at the Survivor Series, they dropped the titles to Eddie and Chavo Guerrero.

As 2002 came to a close, it became more and more apparent that Edge was no longer moving like he had in the months prior.

Programmed against A-Train, who had injured Rey Mysterio in an angle shortly after the Survivor Series show, Edge seemed slower and more apprehensive than he had been.

After the short program wrapped, Edge once again found himself embroiled in a rivalry involving Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle.

In early 2003, Kurt Angle introduced the world to his new find. A tag team recognized as "Team Angle," Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin made their on-air debuts and were immediately thrust into a program with their mentor against the trio of Brock Lesnar, Benoit, and Edge.

As it appeared that Edge and Benoit may break off and feud with Haas and Benjamin while Lesnar prepared for a Wrestlemania date with Angle, injury struck and sidetracked Edge’s ever-evolving career.

Shortly before the No Way Out pay-per-view, in February of 2003, it became apparent that Edge needed neck surgery and would no longer be able to compete in the scheduled six-man tag team main event.

An injury angle was shot, in which Edge was found unconscious backstage and would eventually be driven out of the arena in an ambulance. Many wondered when Edge would return and when he did, if he could pick up where his career left off.

No one could have anticipated, however, the impact he would have on the entire business once the long-haired, blond pretty boy from Ontario got RAW.

Join me for part two, covering the "Rated R" era of Edge’s career, on Saturday.