Adam Copeland faced real life best friend Christian Cage, the current TNT Champion, at AEW Worlds End in a title match. Making his way to th ring, fans immediately noticed something different about Copeland’s ring gear. Instead of the usual tights and trench he’s most recognizable for, Copeland traded them for a pair of black jeans and a black sleeveless Dickies shirt, the same one he wore at WrestleMania 22 in a hardcore match against Mick Foley.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Speaking on the Notsam Wrestling podcast, Copeland detailed why he decided to do the callback to his earlier career. He revealed that while he still had the pants, someone had stolen the shirt at a WWE house show. He worked on the re-design himself. He says he drug his family with him to find a Dickies shirt and then he taught himself how to hammer the rivets into the shirt. “So I taught myself as I went,” Copeland said. “I basically bought three shirts so that I could screw up. I pulled up a picture [of the WrestleMania 22 look]. And I learned how to use double-sided rivets as opposed to single-sided. I went through and punched all of the holes for the star, got the leather, cut it, worked it in, and then put the ‘R’ with all these [hammer noises]. It was a process.”
“But I wanted it to look like, ‘Oh, he’s coming out in WrestleMania 22 gear. We know what happens then.’ So that was the mindset, honestly, with that. But then it became a challenge to, ‘I don’t have the shirt, dammit, somebody stole it. I gotta recreate it. I just gotta make it myself.’” (h/t: WrestleZone)
The moment he’s referring to is the table lit on fire which Lita poured gasoline onto and lit during that match. Copeland then speared Foley, sending them both crashing through the table. In present time, he powerbombed Cage’s protege, Nick Wayne, through it. Copeland won the match and the TNT Championship but Cage capitalized on Killswitch’s title opportunity and won it back shortly after.
