Adam Copeland said on the October 14 episode of AEW Dynamite that 2027 will be his last year in professional wrestling, according to POST Wrestling. The comment came in Cleveland, after Copeland earned a spot in the Clockwork Carnage match for the AEW World Championship at WrestleDream.
WrestleDream takes place Saturday, October 17, at Addition Financial Arena in Orlando, Florida, Wrestleview reported. POST Wrestling described Clockwork Carnage as an eight-person match with a unique ruleset announced in the weeks before the show.
Copeland explained the decision in plain terms. "My face isn't on the posters on teenagers' walls anymore. I'm aging out, and that's okay," he said, as quoted by POST Wrestling. He is 52 and, according to the outlet, has wrestled since the early 1990s.
Copeland, who worked for WWE as Edge, began his career in 1992. He retired from the ring in 2011 because of a neck injury, was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2012, and returned at the 2020 Royal Rumble. His WWE run ended in August 2023 in Toronto against Sheamus.
The same segment included news about his tag partner. Copeland revealed on air that Christian Cage suffered three broken ribs, one of them broken in three places, and a collapsed lung after being thrown into a ladder at AEW All Out in Chicago about two weeks earlier. Wrestleview and POST Wrestling both tied the retirement announcement to that segment. No timetable for Cage's return has been reported.
A date for Copeland's final match has not been announced. His next match is Clockwork Carnage at WrestleDream, and he has said 2027 is his last year.
