Edge too much too soon?

I said in the Benoit post how I felt that the SummerSlam 2004 main event was looking like it was gonna be Benoit vs. Edge for the World Title, especially being that it was in Toronto. I remember that Raw when Edge and Benoit lost the tag titles to La Resistance due to a miscue. I so figured they were setting the grounds for SummerSlam.

Also, Edge has held 11 World Titles, not 10! haha Sorry, I am a huge Edge fan so I like to get the facts straight when it comes to him.

I really thought he was going to get the title in that three way on Raw with HBK and Triple H. He was so over in 2002 and I think if not for the injury he would have been the WWE Champion on Smackdown in 2003. I remember the night he won it, I was going to order NYR but decided against it because it was fairly obvious Cena was going to retain in the chamber match but when I read the results and found out Edge won the title at the end, I quickly ordered the replay just to see that.

I really felt that the lita debacle really really helped edge rise to the top. That said he did win the mitb before the lita love angle spilt over. The biggest feeling I always got from edge Is that he was still very much a fan of wrestling and it showed. He didn't just got out and pick up his check and move on to the next town. I always felt some sort of emotion watching edge whether it was live or on tv

Edge being given so many pushes is a joke to me since I think that Christian was always better than Edge in and out of the ring.

Anyway, Edge was great in the ring from 2000-2002. The guy was fast for his size and was putting on 4-5 star matches constantly, even w/ average wrestlers like Test. I've heard that he was schedualed to win his first world title sometime in 2003 before his neck injury put him out for 14 months.

In 2004, Edge was no where near deserving of the world title. He wasn't over when he came back. Unlike in 2002 when he was one of the most over guys in the company, when he returned in 2004, he just wasn't getting any reactions from the crowd. The fans were not into him and he wasn't over enought. Go back and watch his matches from Backlash and Bad Blood 2004 and you'll see that his reactions from the fans were very, very minimal. Even when he first turned heel in 2004 his fan reactions wern't much more than he got as a face.

Not to mention that he was also alot slower in the ring. The neck injury slowed him down big time and he lost the quickness he had before the neck injury. He wasn't the same in the ring by any stretch of the imagination. He still put on a few good matches, but his stlye was totally different and you could tell he was slowed down alot.

The whole thing w/ Lita is what got him legit "X-Pac" heat from the fans. Matt Hardy was beloved by the fans as the mid-carder who never gave up, and when Lita cheated w/ Edge on Matt in real life, the fans despised him. Thats what finally got him over after several failed pushes in 2004. Not even the MITB win at WM21 got him over like the whole Hardy-Lita scandal did. Had it not been for that its questionable how far Edge would have gone into the main event.

As for him winning 10+ world titles in less than 5 years, thats a huge joke. The guy was a great overall performer, but him winning all those world titles shows just how little the world titles mean any more. Ric Flair won 16 world titles over a 30 years career. Edge won 10+ in less than 5. The guy, for the most part, was a transitional champ, and was usually given the title when the WWE needed a "go-to" guy, like when Kennedy was injured after winning MITB in 2007.

IMO Christian was always the better in-ring performer and promo guy, but because Edge was picked by Vince as to be "The Man" of the group, Edge got push after push, even if he didn't deserve them all, until he finally got over. Christian got over huge as a cocky heel from 2003-2005, yet was rewarded w/ nothing but jobbing to mid-carders, while Edge was given failed push after failed push in 2004. The guy was given main event spots right away when he wans't even over, when Christian had been busting his ass for years and got squat.

Edge was a great performer, but his 10+ world titles and push after push after push from 2004-2005 was a joke IMO.

Well, first of all, Edge did have a huge reaction when he came out on Raw and speared Bischoff on the night of the draft. Secondly, Edge had some fan base cause if you watch Vengeance 2004 the fans had a huge "Let's go Orton"/"Let's go Edge" chant going on.

Toronto turned him heel, surprisingly. At SummerSlam 2004 in the match with Edge, Jericho and Batista for the IC Title. The Canadian fans wanted Y2J to win that sweet IC gold, and definitely turned on their own hometown guy.

As for Edge being slow, yeah, he was. But go back and look at the matches then, Edge was like 250lbs of legit steroid muscle!! He kept getting injured then too cause of how big he was, always pulling muscles and such. So from what I heard in around September 2006, Edge stopped working out all together. That's why he got that horrible looking 'normal guy' body we saw him have in the past 4 or so years. The 'Harley Race' look is what I call it. A man who has a normal body and has tattoos but somehow still has multiple World Title belts.