ESPN recently spoke with the former three time ROH World Champion Adam Cole. Here are some of the more interesting tidbits. You can check out the full interview HERE
“For me, I’ve been very lucky because of my relationship with Ring of Honor,” Cole told ESPN.com. “I’m very close with everyone there, and that includes the guys that negotiate the contracts. Literally my whole career, the process for me is we go back and forth a little bit. Ring of Honor always has a great general idea of what they think I need, and generally we agree pretty quickly on what I want to do.
“For me, which a lot of people ask this, I still haven’t made a decision on what I’m doing. This is the first time I’m going to check and see the interests of other companies and see where everyone else stands. Since 2010, I’ve been just in Ring of Honor this entire time and never even considered the options of anything else. I’m gonna kind of look out and see what everyone else has going on and what else is out there and then kind of play it from there. We’ll see as far as negotiating any type of contracts, whether that be with Ring of Honor or with another company.”
There’s business to settle with fellow Bullet Club leader Kenny Omega before he’s done with ROH and New Japan.
“The whole story with myself and Kenny is, the Young Bucks describe it perfectly — they say, ‘It’s two alpha males who just don’t see eye to eye.’ That’s exactly how we feel,” Cole said. “I feel like I lead the charge for Bullet Club in the States. There’s no question — I’m not an idiot — Kenny leads the charge for Bullet Club in Japan. Obviously, when we are together, it’s very rare. When we are, we don’t always agree or see eye to eye. As far as I’m concerned, I think you could expect or hopefully get to see a match with myself and Kenny very, very soon. We gotta have a friendly competition match where we could get this out of our system. We need to fight it out like brothers. Hopefully, very soon.”
Cole can’t help but imagine what a potential matchup with Omega would look like.
“To me, it would be the full spectrum of pro wrestling,” Cole said. “Some people would probably laugh at some moments, some people would be elated, some people would be furious. The Young Bucks would probably try to get involved. There’s so many different factors to what we could do, what could happen in this matchup. A lot of drama and a lot of excitement. There’s no question in my mind it would be spectacular. For me, in a perfect world, I’m saying this because it’s one of my favorite buildings; the idea of wrestling Kenny in the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City in our first match would be really cool. And then let’s say we have our second match in New Japan at Korakuen Hall. That would be really cool. And then the third one, God, I don’t know; maybe we’d be the first wrestling match on the moon. I think Adam Cole vs. Kenny Omega would be a really cool third and final encounter on the moon. At that point, we could make it happen. I think best two out of three with Kenny would be the way to go.”
“I would want to [start in NXT] because, first of all, I’m a fan of NXT,” Cole said. “I think the brand is cool. I think the Takeover shows are awesome. I think the fans are great. I love the roster of guys. I think it’s something that’s going to be looked at as a very special time in pro wrestling, so I want to be a part of it. Secondly, of course in a perfect world if I went to NXT, I wouldn’t want to be there forever; but I like the idea of going there and performing there and getting accustomed to the WWE audience and them getting accustomed to me and then eventually making the move to Raw or Smackdown. I think it’d be a lot of fun, and I think I would really enjoy working in front of that audience.”
“For me, it’s always been a financial kind of scenario,” Cole said. “I was actually the first one who signed the ‘exclusive to Ring of Honor’ contract. I was the first guy who ever signed one of those contracts. That was tough for me because I had no one to talk to. I had no examples to go on. I was the guinea pig. Of course, it’s coming up with a number you feel comfortable with. Knowing this is the only company you work for and the only paycheck you get and making sure that’s something that’s worthwhile and something that works for you.”
“It’s the crazy state of pro wrestling in 2017,” Cole said. “Guys who you never thought were gonna leave WWE are leaving. Guys who you never thought were gonna go to WWE are going. It’s the closest thing to the Attitude Era that we’ve had as far as not knowing where guys are gonna show up and who’s gonna end up where. And in turn, it’s created this really cool environment for the fans and for the wrestlers.”