During a recent interview with Sporting News, Adam Cole commented on the crazy day several weeks ago where he was called to SmackDown due to the travel issues in Saudi Arabia and then found out he’d be facing Daniel Bryan in the main event. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On finding out about his SmackDown match against Daniel Bryan: “I remember I was up and walking around. I was very much still in chill mode. I had woke up late that morning. I had just eaten. I was kind of relaxing. I was getting ready to hop into the shower. Really, just a very chill day and then I got that text message about needing to go to an airport to get on a plane in an hour and a half. Then I’m rushing around, packing my bag together, getting the address for the airport an hour before it was supposed to take off and I’m 55 minutes from the airport, so the drive was really hectic. Again, just leading up from riding on that plane and thinking, ‘What the heck is going on? What are we going to do?’ Then quickly driving to the venue and walking in there as Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar are finishing up in the ring and finding out I have an hour before I go out and make my debut on “SmackDown” against a guy I respect so much in Daniel Bryan. I’d say the blessing of that scenario is it happened so fast that I had no time to be nervous. It was impossible. There was too much going on to have time to think about ‘Oh, gosh, what could go wrong, I hope it goes well. Oh, boy, this is a really big night for me.’ I didn’t have time to think about any of that. I just had to do it. It was like I was on autopilot almost. Emotionally, I crashed after the match and was like, wow, it’s really cool I got to do that.”
On enjoying the moment: “Sure. In that specific scenario, again, that was a time where I gave myself time to reflect and enjoy what had just happened in the hotel that night. I remember just sitting there and being like, ‘Oh, my god, that was one of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do in my entire career. What a cool night.’ As far as enjoying it… and I did a little, too, when I was in there, I was able to enjoy the moment as it was happening. Sometimes there’s so much going on that you’re just laser-focused and feel like, OK, this is my job tonight. This is what I have to do and that’s what you focus on. Then there are sometimes when you’re in there and you’re able to take a second and go, ‘Wow, this is really cool and I was able to do that night on SmackDown.’ It is a hard balance. It’s a hard one to find but the longer you do this job and the longer you have this profession, you’re able to find ways to make sure that you enjoy what you’re doing while staying really focused on the task.”
On his Survivor Series title defense: “I found out about the match at Survivor Series officially when it got announced. For a minute, when I was playing through stuff in my head, I’m thinking as NXT is invading Raw and SmackDown, maybe I’ll be on Team NXT if they have a Raw versus SmackDown versus NXT match. And then to see the teams form, (I thought to myself), ‘OK, maybe I’m not involved in this.’ Then hearing some rumblings that maybe I’m defending the championship because the Universal title and the WWE title are on the line. So, finding that out had me even more excited. As much as I would have loved to be on Team NXT and as exciting as that is, the fact that the NXT championship is right there with the Universal title and the WWE title as far as being defended on that show is perfect. And it again solidifies the NXT championship as one of the most prestigious in WWE today. Very, very excited for this.”
