Having won Sunday’s Royal Rumble, Edge will now compete for a world championship at WrestleMania 37 this coming April. But the idea of the “Rated-R Superstar” squaring off with either Roman Reigns and Drew McIntyre reportedly wasn’t WWE’s original plan. The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio that Edge vs. Orton was originally booked for Mania, closing the book on their year-long rivalry with an I Quit Match.
“They were going to do an I Quit match at WrestleMania. Edge, in fact, got this idea of coming back and winning the Royal Rumble and maybe winning the championship,” Meltzer said (h/t WrestlingNews.co). “They had to get out the Randy Orton thing, and that’s how they got out of it.”
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The two instead wrapped up their feud on this week’s Raw with a standard singles match. Edge speared Orton and scored a pin after a distraction by Alexa Bliss.
SPEAR!@EdgeRatedR capitalizes on the distraction!#WWERaw pic.twitter.com/8Tlxp71EZc
โ WWE (@WWE) February 2, 2021
Meltzer reported on Monday that Edge will eventually pick Reigns as his WrestleMania opponent. Edge didn’t make an announcement while on Raw, but has been confirmed for this week’s SmackDown.
“It means a lot,” Edge said in his first WWE interview after winning the Rumble. “If you had told me four years ago that I’d be in the Royal Rumble, going in first and winning it to go to WrestleMania… I still feel like I need to pinch myself and I still feel like I’m going to wake up,” he said. It still doesn’t make sense.
“And for Jay [Christian] to be in there, it just… if you wrote this as a script for a Hollywood movie, they’d say its impossible, it can never happen, it’s not realistic. Yet, here we are,” he added. “I don’t get it, and I think I’m going to stop trying to get it and just enjoy it. And stop analyzing why and how, and go ‘fโ it! It’s happening and it’s awesome!’ I feel great, and I have my best friend back with me again.”
WrestleMania 37 will take place on April 10-11 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.