Before Edge officially returned to the ring at WWE Royal Rumble, he needed to get back into ring shape.
Edge retired following WrestleMania 27 due to a neck injury. After nine years, he was able to get himself cleared so he could step back into the ring and continue his career. And it all started because he fell off his bike.
"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," Edge recalled to ESPN. "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.'"
The first signs that Edge had been feeling better were at SummerSlam 2019 when he delivered a spear to Elias. After visiting with doctors, he was officially cleared by WWE doctor Dr. Joseph Maroon. And that's when the training began.
"I talked to [Triple H, Paul Levesque], 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," he said.
Edge was a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble, coming in at number 21 and eliminating three people before being eliminated by Roman Reigns after making it to the final three.
He is set to take on Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing match at WrestleMania 36.
