Adam Cole Says Shawn Michaels Is Involved With All Of His NXT Matches
The current WWE NXT World Champion, Adam Cole, recently spoke with Lilian Garcia on her Chasing Glory Podcast. During the discussion, Cole opened up about the 2-out-of-3-falls match that he had against Johnny Gargano at NXT TakeOver: Toronto 2 that would ultimately end with both men toppling off a steel cage into two tables.
"I'm definitely, incredibly sore from that one; I don't know how many of those I have left in me," Cole explained. "But this trilogy with Johnny Gargano was so important to me and to him because we have known each other for like 10 years so we have talked forever about getting the chance to face each other on a really big stage like NXT, and when I first came to NXT, for that first year and a half, we hadn't touched at all. And this feud kind of started almost as a replacement for Tommaso Ciampa because Johnny and Tommaso were in the middle of their big feud, so they needed a big main event for WrestleMania weekend, so they said, 'Okay, let's do Adam and Johnny.' Which lead to this crazy trilogy, which had a punctuation mark [at TakeOver] and ended at the wrestling/street fight in a crazy steel cage match, but it was a lot of fun. Painful, but a lot of fun."
Cole revealed that Michael Hayes and "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels are two of the higher-ups responsible for producing the unforgettable trilogy of matches that Cole and Gargano have put on. Furthermore, HBK apparently has had his fingerprints on "every one" of Cole's NXT matches since arriving in the company.
"The two gentlemen involved in producing our matches were Michael Hayes and Shawn Michaels, which again, Michael Hayes is great and brilliant. Normally he is involved with producing my matches. Shawn Michaels is involved in every one of my matches. At the Performance Center, I go and work with him directly," Cole said. "A bunch of us do. He is kind of like a mentor for so many of us right now at NXT so he takes a liking and makes sure he has his hand in everything that we are doing.
"Lots of times, the best thing about Shawn Michaels is that he doesn't tell us, 'This is what you should do', he lets us come up with what we think, and he will be excited about the stuff that we are coming up with," Adam continued. "But randomly, if we are stumped on something and we think something is cool but aren't crazy about it, in a matter of five-seconds, he would give us an idea and it's amazing and so much better. It's awesome to have those two to pick their brains. They played a big part in what we created in our match for sure."
Cole considered what his future may look like now that this epic saga of matches reached such a high at TakeOver. With NXT's premiere on the USA Network looming this September, Cole is excited to be representing the company at such a massive time of growth.
"When I think about my childhood dreams, of course that is something in the back of my mind I would love to have – a WrestleMania moment someday. I always think that, but at the same time, and it's no knock on RAW or SmackDown, but I am so incredibly proud of what we are doing at NXT," Cole said. "It's not that I wouldn't want to go [to WWE] someday, but I am so into – even the two years I have been in NXT, to see the growth in those two years, I'm like, I want to be part of this thing where the brand keeps getting bigger and bigger. I want to be involved. I want to be a guy that feels like he was part of that process. There's something so exciting about being part of something's growth and feeling like you were part of that, so right now, pretty much all I am thinking about right now is how proud and happy I am being in NXT and how I want to do all that I can to make that brand as big as I can."
If you use any quotes in this article, please credit Chasing Glory with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Peter Bahi contributed to this article.