Adam Cole made his AEW debut at the All Out pay-per-view event after the main event. It was teased that Cole was there to make the save for Lucha Express and Christian Cage, but he super-kicked Jungle Boy then hugged it out with The Elite.
Cole’s WWE contract expired last month and he had been a free agent for only a few days before appearing at this show. Originally, Cole’s deal was up in July, but he agreed to a short-term extension to finish out his program on NXT TV.
In a media scrum after the show, Cole talked about this.
“Yeah so, funny enough, believe it or not, I was also surprised. Yeah, I was under the impression that it was like six months later. So it was a surprise to me. It was a surprise to them. All of a sudden I went from thinking December was when I was going to start talking about a new contract, to all of a sudden we were talking about in three days. It was public knowledge for a lot of people that I had signed a little extension, I was in the middle of a really serious angle with Kyle O’Reilly, which was very important to me. He’s one of my best friends in the entire world. Then after that is when stuff kind of opened up for me, but very surprising to me. It was just as surprising to me.”
Cole said by just going to AEW shows with his girlfriend, Britt Baker, he knew pretty early on that he wanted to be with the promotion and that’s not a knock on WWE. He said he had an excellent four-year experience with WWE. He wanted to be around people who he loved 24/7, a passionate roster and fanbase.
“Making the decision was a fairly easy one,” Cole said.
Cole also confirmed that he did have a meeting with Vince McMahon while at a SmackDown before he left. While McMahon was intimidating, he said that their meeting was positive.
“The talk went great. We had a really good conversation about a lot of different things. The actual conversation itself was awesome. I had no bad experience with him whatsoever. He is an intimidating man. He definitely commands respect in a lot of ways, but the experience itself was totally fine.”
You can watch the entire media scrum by clicking on the player below (all quotes can be found in the first 3 minutes of the video)::
