Ahead of his first match in over nine months tonight on AEW Dynamite, Adam Cole spoke with Uproxx for a new interview, touching on a variety of subjects.
Discussing his feelings ahead of his return match against Daniel Garcia, the former NXT Champion said,
“I have a huge amount of emotions going through my body, both physically and mentally as far as excitement, as far as nervousness goes. My journey coming back was an incredibly difficult one. There was a real fear for a long time of me wondering if I was ever going to be able to wrestle again. I just remind myself constantly how lucky and fortunate I am that I’ve been able to recover and get to a point where I’m able to get back to doing what I love to do. Of course, there are nerves. I have never in 15 years not wrestled for nine months. That has never happened to me before. So that part of me is nervous. But generally speaking, I am so excited and ready to get back to work.”
Cole also shared that after much consideration, he has decided to adopt a safer wrestling style going forward. He said,
“We’re not invincible. For the longest time it was like, oh my God, yeah, I’ll do anything, and I’ll fall on the concrete, or I’ll take this move, or I’ll fall off the top of this. I certainly am more in tune and I’m going to listen to my body better. Because there are times where you have to find that difference between, I’m banged up and something’s wrong. As far as I’m concerned, this feels like a second chance. I want to come back and have the best run of my entire career. That doesn’t necessarily mean I have to do a ton of death-defying stuff every single night. But at the end of the day, wrestling is a high risk, high reward type of profession anyway. I guess the best way for me to put it is I’m aware now of making sure that I listen to my body, but at the same time I want to go out and just be the best version of myself.”
Adam Cole then proceeded to make it clear that his ultimate goal in All Elite Wrestling remains the same as always, winning the AEW World Championship.
“Short term, I just want to feel good and I want to perform, and I want to do well on March 29th. That’s the biggest thing. Once I get that out of the way, I’m going to feel like a million bucks. I’m so excited to have that match and have that moment. As far as long-term goes, it’s the same as when I first came to AEW, and that is to be the AEW World Champion. Every company that I’ve ever worked for, whether it be Ring of Honor, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, NXT, I’ve been fortunate enough to be put in a situation where I’ve had record breaking reigns as champion. I have that exact same goal, that exact same mentality when it comes to AEW, and at the end of the day, I think if you don’t want to be AEW World Champion then what are you doing? So that is 100 percent my goal and my focus going forward.”
