Drew Williams
Kristen Anzelc
Derek Williams
Kai Tsehay (Adam/Jay in gym with boards)
AEW (wrestling images)
Pure Plank (all other images)
Adam Copeland has never been built for stillness. With a career spanning three decades, he has become one of the most recognizable figures in professional wrestling, known to audiences as Edge during his time in WWE. Today, Copeland remains active in the ring with All Elite Wrestling, but that’s not what stands out when you’re sitting across from him.
On his desk at home sit custom-made figurines of his wife, Beth Copeland, and their two daughters—a small detail that reflects the life he’s built beyond the ring. “So these sit on my desk and stare at me,” he says, smiling.
Fatherhood, business, and acting all exist alongside the work that first made him a star. “Wrestlers are real athletes, and they’re also their own stunt people. They’re also actors,” Copeland says.
“I just didn’t get to end it on my terms,” he says, referring to the neck injury that forced his career to stop abruptly at a moment when there was still more left to explore. “I was told I’d never wrestle again,” Copeland says. For someone wired the way he is, that kind of ending was never going to sit cleanly. “If there’s a challenge, I’ve usually pointed myself toward it. I don’t know why, but it’s just the way I’m wired,” he says.
What began as a challenge eventually became something else that was less about proving anything, and more about reclaiming control. Now, years into that return, the pressure has shifted. “I feel like I’m playing with house money,” Copeland says with a grin, describing a phase that feels less defined by expectation and more by choice. “I’m really just having fun,” he adds.
“Each match in AEW is a story," he says. "If they’re not picking up what you’re putting down, then you better start putting down other stuff.” It’s instinct—reading a crowd in real time and adjusting without hesitation. At the same time, Copeland is direct about what that actually looks like in practice. “The tables are tables, and the ladders are ladders. When we land, there’s no spring under the ring,” he says. For all its entertainment, the risks are real, and the demand is physical.
That carries into how he takes care of his body, where recovery and longevity matter just as much as performance. Alongside his longtime friend and pro wrestler Jay Reso, Copeland has launched Pure Plank, a fitness company that grew out of something far more practical than a business plan.
The idea started with a simple observation. “Jay said, ‘man, your abs are coming in. What’s going on?’” Copeland recalls, describing a moment with Jay when both had stepped away from wrestling and, as he puts it, were “kind of moving into that dad bod realm.” His answer was straightforward. “I’ve just been doing planks, and it’s been tightening my core and strengthening everything,” Copeland says.
When Jay tried it, the reaction was immediate. “I said, ‘try 30 seconds.’ By 20, he was starting to shake,” Copeland says. If something that simple could challenge two professional athletes, there was clearly more to it.
What followed wasn’t a typical launch, but a process of making something effective and accessible. “We just got a piece of paper, a Sharpie, and started drawing ideas,” Copeland says. Nearly five years later, that idea has turned into something tangible.
“It’s low impact,” he says, referring to the kind of core training he’s built Pure Plank around, particularly for people dealing with injuries, bad backs, or simply the reality of getting older. He also speaks in practical terms, especially for those who feel intimidated by the gym or don’t have hours to spare. “Anybody can carve out two minutes. You can figure that out, and planking is a great place to start.”
At home, everything is grounded alongside his wife Beth, whose own career in wrestling created a shared understanding few couples have. Previously known to fans as Beth Phoenix, she is a Hall of Famer with a decorated career that includes a Divas Championship and three Women’s Championship reigns. “If I’m in pain, she gets it,” he says. “More than anybody, she gets it because she’s dealing with the same stuff.” That dynamic carries into how they raise their daughters. “We just try to model everything that we ask the girls to do,” Copeland says.
Acting, meanwhile, feels like a natural extension. “I didn’t know what or who I was,” he says of the period after his initial retirement. “I was 37, and I figured I would go until 40 and then figure it out.” Instead, one opportunity turned into another, eventually leading to a realization he resisted longer than expected. “It wasn’t until I got an Emmy nomination that I went, ‘okay, I guess I am an actor now,’” Copeland says.
In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Copeland takes a more unexpected approach to Ares. “More than anything, I found the humour in him and really tried to bring that out, because the anger and the scariness—that’s going to happen, and that I know I can do. Ares is the kind of character that you begrudgingly like,” he says. Copeland is also slated to appear in The Beekeeper 2, starring Jason Statham, for an early 2027 release. “It was so gnarly and so vicious,” Copeland says of the filming. “You finish the day and you go, ‘oh, I was in a fight.’” He laughs. “It was so much fun.”
For someone with a career like his, legacy would be the obvious way to frame it, but Copeland doesn’t see it that way. “Legacy has always been strange to me,” he says. What matters more is what exists outside of it. “My legacy isn’t what I did jumping around in spandex. The real legacy is what type of human beings we are raising.”
He doesn’t expand on it, and he doesn’t need to, because the answer is already sitting on his desk, quietly staring back at him.
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