Adam Copeland Says WWE Had No Plan For Him at First, Recalls Teaming With Sable At SummerSlam 1998

Adam Copeland made his WWE PPV debut at SummerSlam 1998 alongside Sable, and he recalled how it was because WWE didn’t really have a plan for him. The future Rated-R Superstar made his PPV debut at the show when he was revealed as Sable’s mystery tag team partner against Marc Mero & Jacqueline. Sable and Copeland (then Edge, of course) picked up the victory.

Copeland was asked about the match in a newly-released video from Inside the Ropes, from a 2018 interview, where he spoke about how WWE didn’t have a plan for him because they didn’t know what to do with him yet. He noted that the matter wasn’t all on WWE because he was still very new and didn’t know either. You can see the highlights below:

Adam Copeland on WWE Not Having a Plan For Him:

“The thing with Edge at the beginning is there was no plan, like ever. They just were like, ‘Okay, you’re this mysterious guy.’ That was the answer to, ‘We don’t know what to do with you. We don’t think you can cut a promo. We don’t think you have any personality. You can wrestle, though, so maybe some character and personality will come out.’

“And that’s not fully a knock on them. It’s also a knock on me because I didn’t know. This was like a big leap from wrestling in a barn in Fall Branch, Tennessee in front of six people sitting on bales of hay, to wrestling in Madison Square Garden at SummerSlam. It doesn’t get any further apart, just so you know. And so I didn’t know what it was. They didn’t know what it was. And slowly but surely, we kind of found out what it was.”

On Teaming With Sable:

“In the meantime, it was, ‘Okay, well, this is a good slot. We’ll make you Sable’s mystery partner. Even if there — doesn’t really make sense, you’ll get seen.’ And I took that and went, ‘Okay, I’ll get seen. The one thing I know I can do is wrestle, so I’ll do that. And I can help put together this mixed tag team match that will hopefully be pretty entertaining with someone who’s not a wrestler at all. And with Mark and and with Jacqueline.’ So you know, my first pay-per-views at SummerSlam and MSG is the moral of that story.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Inside The Ropes with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.