On this week’s AEW Dynamite, Adam Copeland and Christian Cage faced off in the fourth match. Copeland challenged for the TNT championship in their home city of Toronto and was able to come out victorious once and for all after his prior attempts. He won the #1 Contender’s Match against Daniel Garcia in February to earn another shot at the championship. Cage was the TNT champion for 81 days in his second reign. He previously held it for 98 days but lost it to Copeland. However, he ended up winning it back in 12 seconds thanks to Killswitch.
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Copeland opened up about the moment on his Instagram account Sunday, noting that he’ll never forget the crowd singing Metaling at the tops of their lungs. “About Dynamite on Wednesday. When I first came back to wrestling back at the 2020 Rumble this was the match I always wanted to get to,” he wrote. “Face to face with @christian4peeps in our hometown 40 years after we first met. @aew made that possible. And Toronto you came out in force to have fun. I hope you did. Sure sounded like it and I’ll never forget it. Ever. As a kid this night was the kind of scenario I dreamed about in art class. If you dream hard enough, even if it takes 40 years, it can happen. So without further ado….AND NEW TNT Champion!”
Following the match on Dynamite, cameras caught up with Copeland where he reflected on the moment even further. “Tonight was the kind of night that you dream of,” he mused. “When you first get into this, when you decide to dedicate your life to this, you dream of nights like this. Your hometown, against a man that you’ve known for forty years, who in my opinion has lost his way, and to get to get that kind of match, that war, it wasn’t even a match, here, to hear that audience, to hear them sing my music to me, to have my family here, to have my buddies from grade school, my buddies from college, it’s one of those nights that I’ll take with me to the grave.
“To walk away with the TNT Championship, finally, I know I had it before for about thirty seconds, so to me, this feels like the first time I’ve properly won a championship since 2011. Man, that’s a long drought. Tonight, it felt like that chapter’s closed.”
Copeland first debuted with AEW at the October WrestleDream pay-per-view after departing WWE. Since signing, he’s made an effort to bring up the next generation of superstars, much like Bryan Danielson and Sting. In what he calls the “Cope Open,” he’s faced the likes of Griff Garrison, Lee Moriarty and Top Flight’s Dante Martin. With the chapter on their 40-year friendship closed, Copeland is looking toward the future. He wants fresh opponents for the title and he issued an open challenge for the March 30 episode of AEW Collision.
