Formation (2007)
The seeds for what became La Familia began to take hold when Edge returned to WWE in November 2007 after recovering from a four month injury which had forced him to vacate the World Heavyweight Championship. He returned at the Survivor Series 2007 pay-per-view (PPV), posing as a camera man to enter a Hell in a Cell match and cost The Undertaker his World Heavyweight Championship against champion Batista. On the following episode of SmackDown, General Manager of the show, Vickie Guerrero, pretended to punish Edge by giving him a World Heavyweight Championship match against Batista, revealing that Edge and Guerrero were an on-screen couple. Seeking revenge, Undertaker used the Tombstone Piledriver on Vickie Guerrero that night, making her absent the following week. In her absence, Edge lost his match against Batista and Theodore Long returned as Assistant General Manager, (having been replaced by Guerrero months before through a storyline illness; although Vickie and Long's roles were previously reversed) booking a Triple Threat match at Armageddon for the championship.
The group grew at Armageddon during the championship match. Toward the final minutes of the contest, Edge apparently took both a spear from Batista and a chokeslam from Undertaker, both of whom were led to believe that he was essentially removed from the contest; however, the camera revealed that at ringside three people looking like Edge were there, with the two lookalikes taken out and the real Edge crouching in wait. Edge waited by the ring until Undertaker had taken out Batista, then hit Undertaker with a steel chair and pinned Batista to win his second World Heavyweight Championship. The next SmackDown opened with Vickie Guerrero, who was now in a wheelchair due to receiving a Tombstone Piledriver from The Undertaker and would remain in a wheelchair for the majority of the following year. Vickie, begrudgingly being pushed to the ring by Long, brought with her the World Heavyweight Championship and then introduced Edge to present it to. The two then revealed Edge's doppelgangers were the Major Brothers, who made a speech retconning their previous gimmick of being brothers and now proclaimed themselves to be Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder, dubbed as Edgeheads, fans and protégés of Edge.
Read more about this topic: La Familia (professional Wrestling), History
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