While he was still selling plenty of funny tee shirts right up through his retirement, Edge was forced to retire when he found out further trauma to his neck could prove fatal. Yet after his post-Wrestlemania tour, Edge stayed busy by becoming a regular cast member of SyFy’s Stephen King-inspired horror series, HAVEN.

Now pressure is on Edge to return to WWE to promote his role on the show, as a RAW guest host or some similar non-wrestling capacity. Apparently, he’s not quite ready for that, but will appear off-screen at Summerslam’s Axxess fan appreciation event.

Copeland has been in wrestling, according to the interview, for nearly 20 years. He must be counting from the time he began training and appearing on the indy scene, because Edge wrestled his first WWE match in 1996, signed his first WWE developmental contract in 1997 and began competing for the company in 1998. That means that as of 2010, Edge’s WWE career has spanned a mere 14 years at best.

Still, Edge has suffered some career-shortening injuries and at age 36, he isn’t getting any younger. His indy debut was in 1992, according to Wikipedia, so if he retired in 2012, he will indeed have completed two decades in the business. Here’s a quote from the interview:

“I’m coming up on my 20th year, and I’ve definitely had some injuries that have shortened my career,” Edge said. “That’s part of the reason I bought up here – we want to retire and listen to the wind in the trees, and we want to do it fairly soon. I may have two more years. With each injury, it’s harder and harder to come back.”

Edge is still considered young by industry vets like Undertaker and Kane, so this interview makes it all the more apparent that WWE needs to continue to emphasize the development of the next generation of stars; much like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and Mick Foley nearly a decade ago, WWE will face a crisis if the next generation isn’t ready to step forward when folks like Edge start calling it quits.

Of course, pro wrestling retirements rarely last forever; but once a superstar begins to wind down, so does his ability to draw. Time for Ted DiBiase Jr., Sheamus, Cody Rhodes and the like to step up and prove the WWE will be in good hands two to five years from now, just as Edge and Christian and even John Cena did when Austin, Rock and Foley were winding down.

Instead, Edge returned to the WWE after a long injury-related absence, as the 29th entrant in the 30-man battle. He rode that momentum to the final three and let John Cena eliminate the freshest man, Batista, who was the final entrant, then eliminated Cena in the aftermath of Batista’s elimination.

So, unexpectedly, Edge will get his choice of belts and opponents to go after, depending on who comes out of the Elimination Chamber PPV in February with the belts still on their waists. Current champs are Smackdown’s Undertaker, who fended off a challenge from Rey Mysterio tonight; Raw’s Sheamus, who won by DQ against Randy Orton in a heel-vs.-heel match; and ECW’s Christian, who wrestled a good program against Ezekiel Jackson.

The most likely scenario currently is for Smackdown-branded Edge to take on Undertaker and his “undefeated at WrestleMania” streak, with ‘Taker as the face. However, stranger things have happened, so don’t rule out a Raw title change at Elimination Chamber, setting up Edge moving over to Raw to take on John Cena, while HBK would then head over to Smackdown to take on ‘Taker.

While Hardy isn’t exactly missing out on Westgate or anything, it’s unfortunate that WWE still hasn’t seen fit to give him an extended run with the strap; he’s clearly one of the company’s hardest in-ring workers, right up there with Chris Jericho.

On the ECW front, Christian became the new title-holder, while the WWE title was put around Randy Orton’s waist and Edge defeated John Cena to take the World Heavyweight title back to SmackDown. It was a turbulent night, as a result, and indicates the WWE is a bit unhappy with the status quo they’d stuck with through last month’s WrestleMania.

Time for some new champs and new storylines in the wake of the Draft, apparently.

So, what happened? Well, the match between Hardy and Edge was top-notch, but at the critical point in the match, Matt Hardy, fresh off his defeat at the hands of Jack Swagger, showed up and at first it appeared he would be helping his brother Jeff.

Then? The chairshot heard across the WWE as Matt attacked his own brother to turn heel and give Edge the win. Talk about defying expectations? A Matt-Jeff feud could be a huge draw for several PPVs to come!

No, this is not a practical joke, a dream, a prank, and you’re not on Candid WebCam. Jeff Hardy really did beat Triple H and Edge to win the title at WWE Armageddon tonight. At long last!

Hardy, often believed to be one of the most under-appreciated wrestlers on the WWE roster both before and after his stint and title run over at TNA, overcame staid and stale booking habits and other long odds to finally win the biggest belt of all … or at least the biggest belt on SmackDown.

Of course, the booking was scripted to make Hardy look a bit flukey for his first major singles title win; Triple H did the heavy lifting, delivering a Pedigree on Edge for the apparent predictable win, but then Hardy hit the Swanton to dislodge Hunter, take his place pinning Edge, and earning the three-count and a free set of luggage… or not, on the luggage.

Let’s hope WWE and Smackdown play it smart and keep the title on Hardy a good long time… like, all the way to WrestleMania, at least.

A little acne treatment might have been a bigger help. Don’t count me as a fan of Edge’s new look; his old look made him stand out from the crowd while the new hairstyle does nothing but help him blend into the crowd. Big thumbs down.

That being said, the only remnant of ECW remaining in One Night Stand is that all the matches were “extreme rules” matches. Well, not really. More like they were all stipulation matches. Some of these dust-ups were pretty lackluster, but the match of the night has to go to the main event match between Edge and Undertaker for the World Heavyweight Title.

As a TLC (tables, ladders, chairs) match, the stipulation played to Edge’s strengths, as he made a living a decade ago, along with the Hardys, at putting on injury-defying TLC matches that almost shortened the careers of Matt and Jeff Hardy, as well as Edge and his then-partner, Christian Cage.

While Taker is nowhere near as acrobatic, fast and flexible as Edge is, well, Edge isn’t as nimble as he was a decade ago, either. Still, the two men put on an amazing show that proves why TLC matches are so popular… and so rare. If you ever get a chance to see one live, buy a bus and make sure you get there and take a bunch of friends along with.

The excitement was enhanced by having Taker’s career “on the line” based on the outcome of the match; since Edge won, that means that Taker conceivably has been “retired” by Edge, though it is widely expected that this is either an excuse to give Taker an extended vacation, which he takes periodically over the past few years, in order to minimize the abuse on his aging body, or may simply set Taker up to “reappear” on the Raw roster at the WWE Draft, due in three weeks during a special, three-hour Raw episode on USA.

Yet does that real-life fact have to be played out in such a disgusting, in-ring manner? Exploiting real-life tragedies for ratings has long been a staple of WWE programming, but it rarely pays off well; it costs the company fans in the long run and any temporary ratings bump is short-lived.

We all know that in real life, Edge is not involved with Vickie Guerrero, so using that as an in-ring storyline makes the tale seem all that more sleazy and exploitive. More than any other WWE broadcast, SmackDown is in need of some serious home improvements prior to WrestleMania. Quickly resolving and flushing this storyline should be at the top of WWE’s to-do list.

We applaud WWE for acting quickly to take corrective action, however painful it might be. We also hope that these 10 superstars are not guilty of what has been alleged or, if they are, that they get the help they need to get healthy and get their lives in order. Lord knows, the last thing anyone wants is to see anymore WWE tragedies play out in real life… let’s keep the drama in the ring!

Here goes. According to the New York Daily News, the following WWE superstars have been suspended:

From RAW:
1) Randy Orton
2) Ken Anderson (Mr. Kennedy)
3) King Booker (Robert Huffman)
4) Anthony Carelli (Santino Marella)
5) Darren Matthews (William Regal)
6) Charlie Haas

From ECW:
7) ECW Champion John Hennigan (John Morrison)

From SMACKDOWN:
Adam Copeland (Edge)
9) Shane Helms (Gregory Helms)
10) Chavo Guerrero

From WWE Corporate:
11) Mike Bucci (Bucci is a talent development manager)

Clearly, the Raw roster will be the hardest hit. The suspensions, if this list is accurate, will play havoc with Raw storylines. Orton had been scheduled for an extended feud with WWE Champion John Cena. King Booker was to have been the main feud for Triple H, who is just returned from an extended injury absence.

Mr. Kennedy was at one point scheduled to be Mr. McMahon’s “bastard child,” a recent storyline launched less than a month ago, according to PWTorch.com. William Regal was just named RAW General Manager. Santino Marrella has been a popular newcomer in the middle of a heel turn, and Charlie Haas has been a solid contributor in Raw’s tag-team division.

While ECW was the cleanest, they are the only division to be losing a sitting champion, if the list of suspensions the New York Daily News is reporting is true: John Morrison, previously known as Johnny Nitro, has been a popular heel champ who was in the middle of a program with C.M. Punk.

The impact is minimal for Smackdown; Edge has been out on injury, as has Gregory Helms. Chavo Guerrero was set for an extended feud with Rey Mysterio, just returning from an injury absence; that program will now be cut short, although Tuesday’s Smackdown taping was in the can for Friday’s broadcast prior to the suspensions being handed down.

While the mess left by these suspensions will require minimal cleanup on ECW and Smackdown, Raw will look a shadow of its former self with six superstars suddenly missing.

Mike Bucci, a talent development guy for the company, could perhaps get the shortest shrift of all 11 named so far, since he doesn’t have an onscreen role or fan base.

Terms of the suspensions were not announced; it is unclear if the releases are permanent or temporary, with or without pay.

Let’s trudge through this, hope the last of the big names have been revealed, and that nothing like this recurs any time soon; it’s a lot more fun to report on the story lines than the headlines.

NOTE: WWE has announced that, effective November 1, any superstars who are released for violating the company’s health policy will have their identities publicly revealed. Let’s hope there are no occasions going forward that would prompt that new policy to be exercised. This whole mess just makes me want to pack up and go on a month-long getaway to Rio Las Vegas.

Right now, I’d have to guess it’s legit, if only because the match seemed pointless to the point of squeamishness. If it was only a storyline concussion to give HBK a few months off, the whole thing could have been way more entertaining in how it played out.

Either way, the result is a non-match that gets Randy Orton back over as a hardcore heel, a “legend killer,” as he prefers to be known in the storyline and the ring. With Edge moving over to SmackDown, and both Triple H and HBK out of action for the foreseeable future, Orton definitely needs to step up his game and become the top storyline heel for Raw … aside, of course, from Khali, who should be feuding with John Cena though SummerSlam, at least.