Adam Cole was a recent guest on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia, and spoke about taking pride in the NXT brand. Cole says getting a ‘call-up’ isn’t something he thinks about, because he’s seen how big NXT has gotten in recent months. He says he wants to continue to be involved in this brand, and while he might entertain going to a different brand later, right now he’s focused on NXT.
“It’s something, obviously, for me—when I think of my childhood dreams, of course, that’s something that 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 whatsoever on RAW or SmackDown, but I”m so incredibly proud of what we’re doing on NXT, I’m not even thinking about going to RAW or SmackDown. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to go someday. But I’m so into, even the two years I’ve been in NXT, to see the growth in the brand in that two years, I’m like, ‘I want to be a part of this thing, and this storm keeps brewing, and this brand keeps getting bigger and bigger. I want to be involved, I want to be a guy who feels he was involved in that process. There’s something so exciting about being a part of something’s growth and feeling like you’re a part of that. So right now I’m pretty much all I’m thinking about is how happy and proud I am with NXT and how I want to do all that I can to make that brand as big as I can.”
Cole also spoke about his mother supporting his professional wrestling career, saying she worries just like anyone, but she’s been very supportive and saw just how much he wanted to pursue his dream of wrestling.
“Incredibly, incredibly close with my mother. She’s probably, again, when I think about someone for the longest period of time who has just been there for me through everything, she – I remember too when I told her I wanted to pursue wrestling. She, in the best way possible, I could tell how worried she was. But she wanted to let me know if I worked really hard she’d be supportive of it. For the first four years of me wrestling, I barely made any money. $50 a show if I’m lucky, still living at home. But she saw as long as I was training hard and working hard and driving all over the place. She was all about it, she would come to the matches. So when I finally did get there and achieve this, like, she was at TakeOver last night. She drove eight hours to the show.”
When asked how hard it was for her to watch his match with Gargano, Cole said his mom is generally okay with things, but he tries to warn her when he’s supposed to take a big bump. He noted that he didn’t tell her about his now infamous spot falling off of the cage at TakeOver, but says even though he’s fine now it has to still make a parent worry.
“She’s okay with the wrestling matches. She’ll worry about a fall here or there, but the weapons stuff, she’s not crazy about. I did [warn her]. But she was pretty adamant. But here thing—especially when it’s a big championship match or a TakeOver match, I think she loves coming to support. I warned her ahead of time. But I don’t think I told her about falling off the cage. So I think that was the thing that really—I’m like, ‘I’m warning you, there’s gonna be weapons and things like that.’ But the second I was able to tell her I was okay, that made her feel better. To me, honestly, long term I think it was better that she was there so I could tell her more quickly I was fine. As opposed to wondering. That’s gotta be so hard for a mom, huh? To see her son falling how many feet through tables from a cage?”
