Other times, it was bouts with slobs who never made the big time and never would. Sometimes he locked up with guys he’d seen on television, like Bad News Brown or Rick Martel. There were shows in gymnasiums in Detroit and tours through frigid armories in Winnipeg. The more he performed, the better he got. Competing under the name Sexton Hardcastle, he slowly found his way in the ring and began to overcome the shyness that plagued him as an awkward high schooler. Still, he found the time to train and perform on local independent shows alongside his childhood friend Christian and his good buddy Rhyno. It was only Copeland and his mother at home, and he had to work odd jobs at local factories to help keep them going. Tough guys who had made their bones in the hardscrabble days of the territory system, they pushed the hopeful to quit, but this was his dream.
EDGE WWE HALL OF FAME FREE
That journey would begin several months later, when the Orangeville-native won an essay contest that earned him free wrestling classes at Sully’s Gym under the tutelage of Canadian competitors Ron Hutchinson and Sweet Daddy Siki. On that April day, Copeland was still eight long years away from making his WWE debut. Even further from his mind was the idea that he would eventually win the World Tag Team Championships with his hero, The Hulkster.
However, it would have been impossible for him to know then that he would be in the main event of The Show of Shows in 18 years. His classmates had even voted him “Most Likely to be WWE Champion” in the school yearbook. A die-hard WWE fan, he grew up reading comic books, listening to KISS and dreaming of one day making it as a Superstar. The year was 1990 and Copeland was only seventeen.
Long before he was an 11-time World Champion, before he shocked the world as The Rated-R Superstar, before he pushed the envelope in Tables, Ladders and Chairs Matches, Adam Copeland was just another wide-eyed kid in the Toronto SkyDome, cheering on Hulk Hogan in his battle against The Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VI.
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