25 Great Wrestlers That EVERYBODY Turned Against
7. COPE
Adam Copeland rather hilariously considered himself a "grizzly, gnarled, evil bastard" in the vein of a Minoru Suzuki ahead of a 2024 match against the Japanese icon, but not quite being able to land on who he really is in All Elite Wrestling has been the most alienating aspect of his run.
Edge's WWE return in 2020 was presented as wrestling's latest impossibility made possible, and initially both promotion and performer understood the assignment implicitly. The heady mix of nostalgia and a sense of unfinished business was ideal for a company badly lacking in stars, and the 'Rated-R Superstar' typically generated some of the loudest reactions as a result. Alas, the more serious and invested into a deep and dark series with Randy Orton (that also took place in the deep darkness of the pandemic...) and a losing title feud with Roman Reigns, the faster the novelty wore off.
Spotting the patterns but making the wrong call to address them, Edge turned heel and formed The Judgment Day, further diminishing his reactions while continuing to misunderstand most what people wanted out of him. The reconfigured group turned on him in mid-2022 and at last things clicked - he found levity as a babyface with some of the overtly earnest stuff stripped away, and it was this version of the big Canadian that rocked up in AEW in 2023.
It flitted between silly and serious from there, but Cope made all his Edge mistakes at his aforementioned "gnarled" worst. A main event run with Jon Moxley was AEW's 2025 nadir, and an absence from television in the second half of the year was both welcome for his character and - being brutally honest - something of a necessity.