5-Time WWE champion was told to change his appearance for looking too similar to AEW's Cope (fka Edge)

AEW's Cope (fka Edge) is one of the most decorated stars in the wrestling business. Before joining the Tony Khan-led company in October 2023, The Rated R Superstar carved out an illustrious career in WWE.

The Stamford-based promotion actively acknowledged Cope as a valuable main event talent. Recently, a former WWE star revealed that the company wanted him to change his appearance, as he looked quite similar to The Ultimate Opportunist. Before becoming a full-fledged developmental brand, WWE NXT used to follow the format of a game show. The first season featured a competition between eight wrestlers, with the winner crowned as the breakout star of NXT.

The former four-time Tag Team Champion Heath Slater was one of the eight contestants during the first season of NXT in 2010, with current AEW's Christian Cage being Slater's mentor. In an interview with Inside the Ropes Magazine, the 41-year-old star revealed that he was instructed to change his look, as his appearance was similar to Cope's.

"Dr. Tom (Prichard) pulled eight of us in the room, and he had an email saying "we need your eight best down there that are ready for TV." I was one of the eight. Next thing I know, they thought that I looked too much like Edge. My hair was long, I had the long coat, I had long tights with emblems on the side that resembled, but didn’t look like [Edge’s]," Slater said.

The former 24/7 Champion stated that his long hair and long coat made him look similar to the former AEW TNT Champion, even though they did not appear entirely the same. Heath Slater was strictly told that he must get rid of the long hair and switch to trunks before his appearance on television.

"But they told me before I got called up to go to NXT that I need to cut my hair off, gotta go to trunks and all this stuff to where I’m like, are you just changing everything about me? I was a bad guy in developmental. They wanted me to be a good guy on television to the point that they were stripping from us everything that we’d done, and now we were going on this game show and being people that we don’t know how to be." [H/T: ITR Wrestling]

The former Nexus member was not thrilled about WWE altering his personality and appearance. Slater was unsure how he would fare in the breakout competition without retaining his original character traits.

Rated-R FTR will battle The Death Riders at AEW Dynasty

After two unsuccessful attempts at winning the AEW World Title, Cope has now decided to set his sights on the AEW World Trios Championship. The Master Manipulator is set to join forces with FTR to challenge The Death Riders for the coveted titles at AEW Dynasty.

It would not be an easy task for the babyface faction to take the championship off the Jon Moxley-led group. Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler are seemingly not on the same page, as tensions have flared up between the duo in the past few weeks.

If Rated-FTR ends up on the losing side at Dynasty, Harwood and Wheeler might end up turning on Cope. Dax The Axe had recently called out The Rated-R Superstar, stating that his issues with Jon Moxley have kept FTR from focusing on the AEW World Tag Team Championship.