Ring of Honor’s Adam Cole recently took some time to participate in an interview with Marc Madison of The News Hub. Cole reveals his past training under DJ Hyde, and John Dahmer, competing for CZW and PWG and working alongside Matt Hardy. He opens up about how grown since he’s continued to develop and his success as part of Mount Rushmore and more recently The Kingdom. Check out the highlights below and the complete interview here:
About training under DJ Hyde, John Dahmer, Al Snow and Les Thatcher:
Well with all four of those guys they sound completely different. They helped me on completely different levels. My two main trainers were John Dahmer and DJ Hyde. DJ Hyde mainly taught me how to be tough, I mean the beatings that he used to give the students as far as wrestling initiations go were as tough as they come and I’m thankful for it. When I left his training, I wasn’t really afraid of anything, anymore and then on top of that DJ is very good about taking his students to other wrestling events and getting their names out there whether it be helping set up the ring, or helping set up chairs or anything like that. It was kind of networking from a very early stage in our career. Whereas John Dahmer taught us what the technique behind a lot of the wrestling and then the multiple seminars I did with Al Snow and Les Thatcher at the time. They really taught me the psychology of what we do. Understanding why and when you do certain things so I’m totally thankful for all four and they were all completely different styles of wrestling for me.
His initial tryout with the WWE:
That particular tryout I went down to Afa the Wild Samoan’s training school which at the time was located in I believe may be Tampa, Florida but I may be incorrect on that but somewhere in Florida. We actually got to train for a week with Haku and Afa himself and it was awesome. It was such a good experience. I got my ring conditioning up and I learned little tricks of the trade. I learned how to be more intense in the ring because the Samoan’s are so intense. Then going into that tryout, again the harsh reality of that now looking back as to where I was in wrestling at that time, I was in just way over my head.
I was a 19 year old kid, I was 170 ibs soaking wet. I didn’t have an identity. I didn’t have a look. I didn’t have the proper gear. I was just a young guy trying to be a wrestler. So to be honest, WWE didn’t even give me a second look. I don’t even know if they looked me in the eyes based on my size, based on my experience. I literally looked like a child there. For me it was more motivating as going forward and now I kind of have an idea of what I need to do. A lot of that just comes with just time. When you’re an independent wrestler, committing a lot of time and effort into honing your craft as much as possible in as many different places as possible will catch the WWE’s interest as far as the independent level goes. It was definitely an eye opening experience for me.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
