Adam Copeland is set to challenge for the AEW Tag Team Championship on April 12 at Dynasty in Vancouver, where he and Christian Cage are scheduled to face FTR, the team of Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood. For Copeland, it is the kind of match he has been waiting for. “Well, Christian and I versus FTR would be on that list,” he said of the dream bouts he wanted to chase.
The match matters because it brings Copeland and Cage back into the sort of spotlight that has defined much of their long partnership, this time in a city that means something personal to both of them. They already did a version of the reunion in Toronto, their hometown, and Copeland said they now get to do it in Vancouver. He also said the act has to keep moving. “We don’t want to do the same thing,” he said. “This version of us is navigating from a different place.”
That approach is part of why Copeland said character work matters as much as the matches themselves. He said neither he nor Cage wanted Cage to lose the element that made his character so popular, and that they had to do the partnership the way they are doing it now. The two also still come out to separate music, something Copeland said matters because people react to both. “You don’t want to just see guys coming out to do the greatest hits,” he said. “We needed to do it this way.”
Copeland, 53, has spent 25 years in the business and knows his in-ring career has already outlasted one ending. Neck injuries forced him to stop wrestling in 2011, but he returned at the 2020 Royal Rumble and later had his WWE farewell before signing with AEW in 2023. He said his current run still feels connected to how he wants to be seen now. “One of the reasons I started using Cope is because I knew we’d get to this,” he said.
The reunion also fits the larger arc of his work in AEW, where he and Cage were bitter rivals for much of their time together before finding common ground for an onscreen pairing. Copeland said he does not know when his in-ring days will end, and that uncertainty leaves each major match carrying a little more weight. Outside the ring, he said he is busy as a father and husband to Beth Phoenix, and he also plays Ares on Disney+'s Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The Vancouver title shot answers one question clearly: he is not winding down yet, and he still wants the matches that matter most.
