Adam Cole has gone through a great deal in order to return to the squared circle in 2023.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Adam Cole was a recent guest on Sports Guys Talking Wrestling to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked during his first two months of being sidelined if he realized how serious his concussion issues were, Cole admitted he did take it seriously but didn’t realize how serious it truly was.
“I think in my mind, I didn’t,” Adam Cole admitted. “I took it incredibly serious, but I didn’t realize that potentially my life could be affected going forward. I think in my mind up to that point, I thought, okay, I had two back-to-back ones. I’m getting a little bit older. This is just one of those things I’ve been I’ve been going hard for 15 years. My body just needs a little bit of time to recoup and recover and things like that. I thought I’m going to bounce back. Be right back to normal in no time. Give me a month or two. I’ll be good to go.
“And then two months after not being able to do anything but go for walks and scoring so poorly on this test and then having the doctor look at me with sadness in her eyes and say, I mean, you were so close to not even being able to drive out of here to go home. That was like such a giant wake-up call where you were at that point; you realize how serious this really is.
“I knew I had a lot of hard work ahead of me, that’s for sure. And even still, as discouraging as getting that result was, I honest to god though I never truly accepted the idea of stepping away from the ring. I was so focused and so determined that I am going to be at rehab every single day that I can go. I’m going to do everything necessary to make sure that I’m able to get back into the ring.
“Of course, if doctors tell me, ‘Hey, this isn’t a good idea. No, you’re not cleared,’ then that’s a hill that I have to cross when I get there. But I was so focused and determined to do whatever I had to do as long as it took to be able to get back into the ring. So that doesn’t change again how discouraging it was especially to get that score on that test. But I still had the optimism and the focus going forward.”
When asked if it was weird to have his journey chronicled on AEW: All Access, Cole revealed before he got hurt that he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to do the show in the first place. But in hindsight, he’s really glad that he did it.
“Oh my god, yeah. Especially considering the fact that I wasn’t even sure before I got hurt if I wanted to do it or not,” Adam Cole revealed. “Again, I’m generally pretty private when it comes to my real life. So the idea of having cameras follow you around in all these points that are normally very private for you was a little bit scary for me at first, on top of that, knowing as this filming is going on, that I may not be able to return to the ring anymore. It’s kind of crazy.
“I kept going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to do it. And I’m so glad that I did. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but again, so many fans had no idea what was going on with me. They just thought that they knew something was wrong, but they didn’t know what was wrong. And there were a lot of rumblings of what was going on with Adam Cole at that point in time.
“And the fact that so many fans were so supportive and would send messages every single day, even if I didn’t reply to them all. Sometimes when I was having my worst days, I would go online, or I would check and look at these messages about people saying that they hope I’m doing okay and again, I brought this up before in LA, but so many people saying I don’t care if he never wrestles again I just want him to be okay.
“That meant so much to me at that point in time, so much so I thought, you know what, the least that I could do is kind of chronicle this journey, chronicle this story. So the fans can really understand and kind of see the process of what I had gone through to attempt to come back to the ring. So again, it was scary at first, but I’m so glad that I did it.”
READ MORE: Adam Cole: Bryan Danielson And Christian Cage Gave Me Advice During My Recovery
What do you make of Adam Cole’s comments? Are you happy that All Elite Wrestling documented Cole’s journey of returning to the ring on AEW: All Access? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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