While AEW might be trying its best to distance Adam Copeland from his former name of Edge, the company is having no problem in leaning into all other aspects of his previous WWE gimmick, whether it’s his music, his former tag team partner, or the “Rated-R Superstar” nickname, and that included hyping up his “rebuttal” to Christian Cage on Wednesday’s show as being R-rated.

Of course, AEW isn’t a PG show like WWE, and the talent can play a little more loosely with certain things, which led to some excitement about what Copeland might say or do. However, his segment ended up being incredibly flat, feeling like something straight out of Vince McMahon’s creative as he talked in circles, harkening back to something he used to do as The Judgment Day’s leader. Rather than showing some venom towards his former partner, Copeland went down the route that he would never fight Christian because of their friendship and family connections, which is a rather dull angle. It’s the softball route, and considering AEW had been hyping this up to be an R-rated moment, this segment fell short of the mark as Copeland rambled.

While this is obviously a long-game type of storyline, which both Copeland and Cage tend to be successful in, AEW is going to have to do a stronger job of building it. While not every segment can be a blockbuster moment, it’s important to not have too many that are slowly trudging over the line such as this one, especially when it was promised to be explosive and exciting, with audiences anticipating a fired-up Copeland, not someone sitting and shooting the breeze with Renee Paquette.