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Adam Copeland recalled how he once rattled off his history with Jay Reso to fellow pro wrestler Chavo Guerrero, a tale that left Guerrero, himself with a storied past in wrestling lore, looking stunned.

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Copeland said he recounted for Guerrero how he and Reso met in public school, broke into the business together in the Toronto area and improbably went on to become one of the greatest tag teams in the history of the industry, before following that up with iconic runs as singles competitors.

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That doesn’t even begin to factor in the accolades and accomplishments they achieved while in the business, from seven reigns as World Wrestling Entertainment tag team champions, being innovators of Tables, Ladders and Chairs matches and putting together singles careers that saw Copeland become one of the most decorated champions in the history of pro wrestling.

Not bad for a couple of kids from small-town Orangeville, Ont.

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On Wednesday night, Copeland and Reso, known better in All Elite Wrestling as Christian Cage, will come home to Toronto, perhaps for a final time, to face off for the TNT Championship in an I Quit Match.

“Chavo was like ‘Dude, that’s a movie, do you understand that’s a movie?’” Copeland recalled of that conversation during a telephone interview with Postmedia, adding that he told Guerrero he couldn’t have understood it because he was too busy living it. “To me, that was our path.”

Looking back, however, Copeland said he certainly can understand why their story would present as so compelling to the right audience.

“At that time, it was a different era and it was a lot harder (to break into WWE), especially being from Canada, let alone if you were from Ireland or Scotland or Australia,” Copeland said. “There was no social media, there was no way of getting your name out there. You couldn’t just post a little 10-second clip of what you do and have thousands, possibly millions, of people seeing it. That just wasn’t the case.”

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Rather, he said, aspiring wrestlers had to have their mobile highlight package at the ready on the off-chance you might meet the right person at any given show.

“You had to bring your VHS tape, with your highlight package and maybe a match … and you carried a resume with you and a photo,” he said. “And you really just took bookings wherever you could get them. It was just a different time. I look back on it fondly because it was hard. If you were going to break through, chances are you had to be good.”

A relaxed-sounding Copeland recalled the first time he met his lifelong friend, who he’ll face for the third time since joining AEW last fall on Wednesday at Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto.

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“It was sixth grade,” Copeland said. “He had just moved to Orangeville from Grand Valley.”

The 50-year-old Copeland said that Reso, also 50, better remembers that first encounter.

“He has a better memory for some reason than me, but he didn’t want to come in the school (on his first day) and the teachers got me to go out and talk him in,” he said. “I was kind of the first person in his new town that he talked to.”

The first impression can often be a lasting one. The two quickly became the best of friends, discovering a mutual love for professional wrestling, among other things.

“From that point forward, sixth grade on, we’ve just kind of been stuck to each other in one way or another,” Copeland said.

To call what the best friends have done in pro wrestling improbable would be like calling Wayne Gretzky a great hockey player.

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Along with a small group of now legendary fellow Canadian wrestlers, Copeland and Reso broke into the giant world of WWE at one of its most important and commercially successful eras in history. In the process, they helped re-establish and reinvent tag-team wrestling before both established solo careers that landed Copeland, and inevitably one day Reso, too, into the hall of fame.

Copeland’s improbable return to pro wrestling in 2020 after a career-threatening neck injury had shut his career down nearly a decade earlier, opened the door to the possibility that he and Reso may one day again share the same ring, but it seemed unlikely given that Reso was with AEW and Copeland in WWE.

After having a match with longtime friend Sheamus in Toronto last year, Copeland hinted that he may have wrestled his last match as he felt the showdown in his hometown told a great story.

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“When I was having that match with Sheamus, I was like ‘This could be it, this could very well be it, because I’m really loving all of this right now,’” Copeland said. “But I told myself I wasn’t going to make a final decision until I got home, got past it, got past the emotion of it, and really just sat down with the family and talked to the girls to see where their heads were with it, see where my head was at with it.”

After talking with his wife, fellow WWE Hall of Famer Beth Phoenix, and their two daughters, Copeland decided it was time for a change, and the opportunity to work with Reso again, among many others, was too much to pass up.

“In going to AEW, I thought that’ll be fresh, that’ll be brand new, that’ll be super exciting. And it has been. I think you can probably tell when you see me out there, I’m just having fun. At this stage of my career, am I having a good time? Yeah. I’m not concerned with championships. I want to go out, have fun and hopefully make compelling television.

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“And to get to do it with a whole roster of (people I hadn’t worked with before). I looked at AEW and I went, ‘OK, there’s (Jon) Moxley, there’s Claudio (Castagnoli), there’s Samoa Joe, there’s Hangman (Adam Page), there’s Swerve, there’s Kenny Omega, there’s the Young Bucks, there’s FTR, there’s 10, 12 just off the top, let alone getting in with a guy like Nick Wayne or Griff Garrison or Lee Moriarty, which I’ve had a chance to do, too.

We just got (Kazuchika) Okada, we just got (Will) Ospreay, I’ve never laid hands on either one of those guys.

Adam Copeland

“I’ve kind of been all over the roster and I’ve only been there since October. I’ve looked at the next year and a half or so and there are a lot of stories we can tell. We just got (Kazuchika) Okada, we just got (Will) Ospreay, I’ve never laid hands on either one of those guys.

“For me, this is like when you were a little kid and you got your action figures and you started having matches with people who haven’t had matches before. That’s what this feels like. I never would have wrestled Minoru Suzuki, that wasn’t going to happen, but sure enough I found myself across from him. This is pretty cool. It’s just fun. If it’s not fun, then why do it?”

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Since debuting in AEW, Copeland said he has modified his previous ‘Rated R Superstar’ persona to the edgier product AEW offers over WWE.

“Really, what I wanted to do was to shake it up a little bit,” Copeland said. “I didn’t want to shake It up so much to where I’m trying to do Judgement Day Edge again. I wanted to tweak it a little, but I wanted it to be recognizable enough for people to go ‘Oh, OK, it’s that dude.’ I wanted to stay in the same bowling alley, just not in the same lane,” he said with a chuckle.

And what fans see now won’t be what they see down the road, he said.

“It was a little more rock ‘n’ roll before, now I’m leaning more toward a kind of grindhouse, death-proof kind of rockabilly vibe, I guess.” Copeland said. “But at some point here, I want to dip into some different choices. Starting out, I wanted to keep it as close as I could to what people know because there was already going to be some changes in terms of name and things like that.

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“So I wanted to keep the things that didn’t necessarily have to be changed closer to the original form and then I figured once I did that, once I have a few months under my belt, then I can start playing around with things. And I think honestly, once the story with Jay is done, then I can kind of move into the next phase, whatever that is.”

Less than a year after facing Sheamus in Toronto, on a night that had the potential to be Copeland’s hometown swansong, he returns to where it all started, to face his lifelong best friend, in a match that will test not only their limits, but their commitment and their pride, an I Quit Match, during which the winner is only declared after one of the two men say they’ve had enough and quit.

“To me, the place is always the most important thing, and the opponent,” Copeland said of the significance of facing Reso in Toronto. “It was a no-brainer. It was like ‘Is this match going to happen at Revolution and my way of thinking was ‘That’s Sting’s night’ and they deserve all the bells and whistles for his last match. With this being an ‘I Quit’ match, we were going to need some bells and whistles.

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“In looking at the schedule, Toronto popped up and it was ‘It feels like we should do this in Toronto and not in Greensborough. It was already a loaded show, it didn’t need us. But we can get to Toronto and we can do this right. For me, that’s kind of what this has been. It’s the culmination of a 40-year story.

“So if you have an opportunity to culminate a story that long, why not do it where you both grew up?”

Copeland said he isn’t one to give much credence to where things rank in his career, instead only offering that he is excited to face his friend in their hometown.

“I think it’s going to be a blast,” he said. “I just want to have fun. That’s really what it boils down to. And to get in there with him, in our third match in this company, and to be able to have a story that has involved eight or nine different characters and lasted six months, I’m really proud of that.

“I think that it will be a lot of fun.”

janmurphy@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/Jan_Murphy

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