Edge appeared on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast on Thursday and reflected on his grueling 36-minute Last Man Standing Match with Randy Orton at WrestleMania 36. The pair fought throughout the entire WWE Performance Center, eventually culminating in them standing on the top o a semi-truck that was parked in the back. The “Rated-R Superstar” closed out the match by knocking Orton out with a Con-Chair-To, the same move Orton used on him back in January when the vicious feud began. The WWE Hall of Famer revealed that between the show getting moved to the PC and creative’s sudden decision to change how much time they were giving the match, the pair had to completely change their plan for the match hours before it was taped.
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“We had a lot of things that we had to adapt around on top of doing it in an empty arena,” Edge said. “The time that we filmed it didn’t coordinate with the ideas we had. So we find that out on the day, hours before. So we had to change everything. And that’s truly what you saw, was a 40-minute audible. And I’m proud of that. I’m proud of, without uttering two words to each other, we were able to do that.
“It’s a very challenging thing, on top of the challenges that were already there. But again, that’s part of the gig,” he later added.
He explained that his original vision for the match — a “dirty, ugly personal” fight — was still intact, but he had ideas for using drone cameras and fighting on a rooftop, but those had to be scrapped since the match was taped during the day.
He also addressed the criticism that the match went on too long. At 36 minutes, 35 seconds, the match wound up being the second-longest WrestleMania match in history behind Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels’ Iron Man match.
“I’m very proud of it. I’ve heard there’s feedback that it was too long, this and that. All of the feedback I’ve gotten personally, to myself or to my social media feeds has been all positive. When I have Bret Hart call me and tell me that he loved it because it looked like a fight, I don’t care what anybody else says from that point on. Because his opinion, to me, has more weight than absolutely everyone anywhere.”
