Ring of Honor World Champion Adam Cole recently spoke with The Swerve Magazine in advance of the ROH live event in Pittsburgh on Friday. You can read some highlights below:
Adam Cole talks about being only the third multi-time ROH World Champion:
I am the third guy ever to win the Ring of Honor title for the second time. It is pretty cool. The list of Ring of Honor Champions is already a very prestigious list. If you look at the names of Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan), CM Punk, Seth Rollins (Tyler Black), Nigel McGuinness, Samoa Joe and the list goes on and on. The reason the championship means so much is because of the men who have held the title. Then you look at the other class of those guys that were not only able to carry it once, but twice. The fact that I am in that class of guys to me means my name will be synonymous with Ring of Honor forever. So, to not only have that reward, but that responsibility of being a two-time champion is humbling. It is something that makes me very confident going forward.
Cole talks about the success in his feud with Jay Lethal as a traditional face/heel feud, without dragging it out too much:
I’m really glad you brought that up because I was just talking about this the other day. If you look at a couple other storylines I’ve had with Jay Briscoe and Kyle O’Reillly, we had a lot of time to play with to tell those stories. Which is great. For an artist or a pro-wrestler, it is great to have more things to play with when you are trying to tell a story where you are trying to create peaks and valleys.
With the Adam Cole/Jay Lethal story, we did not have much time to prep this story. We didn’t have a lot of time to play with. I and Jay had to pack in a lot of really compelling stuff in a short amount of time. We kept it very simple. And if you look at the feud between me and Jay Lethal, it is a very traditional heel versus babyface storyline with good peaks and valleys. Working with Jay, somebody as talented as him, really made this entire process easier for me. It also made it a lot of fun.
Cole on how joining Bullet Club may impact his career:
For sure. Starting with the Bullet Club, if you look at the Bullet Club as far as its influence and every major wrestling organization in the world, it is pretty insane, how much impact this group has made. For me to get to be a part of that, it is just awesome. It is so cool. And the fact that we got to do it on pay-per-view and it was a big surprise that we were able to trick a lot of people was really cool.
Even more importantly, this opens the doors for me to work for New Japan. I worked for New Japan in the past and whether it be due to injuries or scheduling conflicts, we quite couldn’t make it work. This Bullet Club idea came to me from them. And I said, “Yes, of course.” So now, hopefully, this starts an entire new chapter for my career. I get to go over to New Japan and make a name for myself.
Does he think wrestlers have more options today compared to five years ago?
Absolutely. And I think the reason for that is there are more places to work now. The scene now is not only healthy for a wrestling fan for finding an alternative they might want to watch or what they want to check out, but there is so many places where you can make a good living as a pro wrestler now. I look at this and I think it is not the Attitude Era, but it is the closest thing to the Attitude Era that we’ve had since. When you have guys that are popping up in companies where you thought you would never see them pop up, whether you are a good guy or a bad guy, being popular. Just the absolute chaos that is going on in pro wrestling right now. The multiple places to work, that is a big reason why I think that wrestlers have more of a grip on the pulse of what they want to do and what they want to project. There are multiple places where they can make a living. It is a really cool time right now.
