Ring of Honor World Heavyweight Champion Adam Cole recently spoke with The Swerve Magazine to promote ROH’s event in Pittsburgh at Stage AE on September 16th. Cole was asked about winning the Ring of Honor World Title for the second time in his career. Cole noted that he is only the third guy ever to win the title two times.
“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 and Jay Lethal have had quite the rivalry. Cole won the ROH World Title from Lethal at the Death Before Dishonor XIV PPV event in August. Cole noted that he had a lot of fun working with Lethal, and that he made it an easy process to get the feud over.
“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’Reilly, 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 has worked with Kevin Owens, Karl Anderson, Luke Gallows, and AJ Styles throughout his career. Cole was asked about working with them before they went to WWE.
“It is awesome. I’ve known that those guys, if given the opportunity, could be extremely successful, and more importantly, they are amazing wrestlers and talents, but the human beings that they are. They are just incredible, incredible people. So to see guys who were told, “Nah, the WWE would never work for you.” Or, “You would never succeed here or there.” To see them succeed is really fulfilling for me, not only as a co-worker, but a friend. To me, it is the epitome of anyone who looks at their life and says, “I don’t really know if I can do that because so-so said I couldn’t,” proves right there it is bull, because you can do anything that you want.”
When asked about his future in pro wrestling, Cole said that when he was younger he always wanted to go to WWE but now that has changed because he can’t control if they sign him. Right now, Cole is focused on being the best ROH World Champion that he can be.
“As far as me thinking about the future, I’ve said this before and I’m going to continue to stick by this attitude of just taking everything one day at a time. When I was 18 or 19, I used to obsess with thinking I needed to get to the WWE or I need to get to wrestle here. It becomes so overwhelming. That is not necessarily anything that I can control, but what I can control is me improving every day, getting better everyday and focusing on the task at hand. Right now, the only thing I am focused on is making this run as RoH Champion as good as I possibly can and when I debut for New Japan making sure I have a successful run there as well. Right now, I am super focused, super motivated. I think me doing that will help those processes.”
Cole also talked about the future of ROH and more. You can read the entire interview here.
