Adam Cole Hasn’t Made a Decision On Next Career Step

– Adam Cole spoke with ESPN for a new interview ahead of his contract with ROH expiring on May 1st. Some highlights are below:

On his Ring of Honor run: “For me, I’ve been very lucky because of my relationship with Ring of Honor. I’m very close with everyone there, and that includes the guys that negotiate the contracts. Literally my whole career, the process for me is we go back and forth a little bit. Ring of Honor always has a great general idea of what they think I need, and generally we agree pretty quickly on what I want to do.”

On his future: “For me, which a lot of people ask this, I still haven’t made a decision on what I’m doing. This is the first time I’m going to check and see the interests of other companies and see where everyone else stands. Since 2010, I’ve been just in Ring of Honor this entire time and never even considered the options of anything else. I’m gonna kind of look out and see what everyone else has going on and what else is out there and then kind of play it from there. We’ll see as far as negotiating any type of contracts, whether that be with Ring of Honor or with another company.”

On establishing his own brand: “There’s so many talented, good independent wrestlers on the scene today. But being able to stick out and have a brand or a catchphrase or something that when someone does something, you know that it’s yours. Like, ‘Adam Cole Bay Bay’ is my thing. Everyone knows that if anyone would stick their hands up and yell their name with ‘Bay Bay’ at the end, they would feel like that’s my thing. Or the Young Bucks’ superkick party. That is something I think that people focus — it’s not that they should lose focus on the matches that they’re having and the promos that they’re cutting — but they should put just as much effort into establishing or creating even more things for their brand that could help them stick out and be different.”

On his feud with Kenny Omega: “The whole story with myself and Kenny is, the Young Bucks describe it perfectly — they say, ‘It’s two alpha males who just don’t see eye to eye.’ That’s exactly how we feel. I feel like I lead the charge for Bullet Club in the States. There’s no question — I’m not an idiot — Kenny leads the charge for Bullet Club in Japan. Obviously, when we are together, it’s very rare. When we are, we don’t always agree or see eye to eye. As far as I’m concerned, I think you could expect or hopefully get to see a match with myself and Kenny very, very soon. We gotta have a friendly competition match where we could get this out of our system. We need to fight it out like brothers. Hopefully, very soon.”

On possibly signing with WWE: “I would want to [start in NXT] because, first of all, I’m a fan of NXT. I think the brand is cool. I think the Takeover shows are awesome. I think the fans are great. I love the roster of guys. I think it’s something that’s going to be looked at as a very special time in pro wrestling, so I want to be a part of it. Secondly, of course in a perfect world if I went to NXT, I wouldn’t want to be there forever; but I like the idea of going there and performing there and getting accustomed to the WWE audience and them getting accustomed to me and then eventually making the move to Raw or Smackdown. I think it’d be a lot of fun, and I think I would really enjoy working in front of that audience.”