At WrestleMania 21, Edge won the first ever Money in the Bank ladder match, gaining a contract that gave him a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship within one year. According to a podcast interview with Chris Jericho, Copeland said that he did not initially like the idea of the ladder match and even told WWE management not to include him on the WrestleMania 21 card altogether. However, he was talked into competing by the other participants like Jericho and Glenn Jacobs who said the match had the potential to be a big success. At Backlash, Edge defeated Chris Benoit in a Last Man Standing match to end the feud. Several weeks after, Edge was then paired with Lita, his real-life girlfriend at the time, in an angle in which she betrayed her storyline husband Kane, by costing him the Gold Rush tournament finals match to determine the number-one contender for the World Heavyweight Championship on the May 16 episode of "Raw". The next week, Edge received his World Heavyweight Championship match against Batista, which he lost. Edge started a feud with Kane leading to several matches between them including one at Vengeance, when Edge lost to Kane. After trading several victories on "Raw", the feud ended in a stretcher match on the July 25 episode of "Raw" that Edge won, but shortly after, Kane performed a tombstone piledriver on Lita and later abducted her in an ambulance.