Adam Copeland says he doesn’t care about reaction online to the spike angle as long as it got a reaction in the arena

When Adam Copeland punctured Jon Moxley’s skin in dozens of places when he suplexed him onto a spiked board on the Mar. 19 episode of AEW Dynamite during a street fight, many fans responded with criticism that it was a step too far in terms of simulated violence being real. The nails stuck to Moxley even when he stood up and he struggled to remove them from his flesh. Copeland says he doesn’t care, but acknowledges there can be diminishing returns with violence in pro wrestling.

“I don’t really care about the reaction, besides the live reaction,” he told Kenny McIntosh from Inside The Ropes. “That to me is the reaction that matters – and they were into it live.”

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He says times have changed and he believes a spot in a match like that is in line with fan expectations in this era. “Hey, I get it, I do,” he said. “Because I understand that it can be diminishing returns and all of those things. You also have to know your audience and you also have to understand that times have changed, for good, bad, however you want to look at it.”

He said that spot is a result of him adjusting to fan expectations in this era. “I like to think I’ve always been a proponent of understanding that things do change,” he said. “It’s going to be more athletic now, it’s going to be more violent now, and things just naturally tend to get ‘more’ as time goes on. I mean, you look at the internet. I remember dial up and now there’s AI. Things change, that’s just the nature of life. That’s the nature of the world. So I don’t really factor in how people react after the fact. I just know they’re into it live, that’s my job, and that’s how I gauge things.”

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