Michael Cole Recalls Yelling At Pat McAfee For Wearing Shorts On WrestleMania 35 Kickoff

Michael Cole is great friends with Pat McAfee, but he recently recalled how they got in an argument over McAfee wearing shorts on the WrestleMania 35 Kickoff show. Cole looked back at the incident during his appearance on Impaulsive, and you can check out the highlights below (h/t to Fightful):

On the start of McAfee’s WWE run: “Pat and I are really good friends. Pat was always a wrestling fan. He came to one of our house shows in Indiana a number of years ago. We just started talking. He’s like, ‘I’d like to try this.’ He was at Barstool at the time. We’re like, ‘Why don’t you come in and start doing some stuff with NXT.’ He came in and started doing the Countdown shows and all that. Me and him got really close and then our relationship imploded for a night. I’m no longer in charge of the announcers. I used to, I’m not only an announcer, but I was in charge of all the announcers. I was a VP in the company doing all of that.”

On their WrestleMania 35 argument: “We brought Pat in to do the WrestleMania kick-off show. Everybody at WrestleMania is in tuxes and ties. Pat shows up in shorts. They were tuxedo shorts, but he shows up in shorts. We’re about to go on the air live, it’s all this pressure. I see Pat walk into Gorilla with these shorts on and I’m like, in front of everybody, which is my bad, ‘What the f**k are you doing? Dude, you’re in f**king shorts. It’s WrestleMania.’ Stephanie McMahon is there. Vince [McMahon] (is there). I’m dressing down Pat. In the heat of the moment, I didn’t think about it. He stormed off. ‘Where the f**k are you going?’ ‘I’m not doing the show.’

“He goes back and is packing his bag in the locker room to leave. He goes, ‘You just embarrassed me in front of everybody in this company.’ I never thought of it that way, but he was right. It’s hard because these guys are your peers and you’re working on air with them, but you also manage them. Thank God I got out of that. Pat was going to pack his bags and leave. We ended up working it out and we showed Vince the shorts and Vince was, of course, Vince. ‘They look great, why are you yelling at him?’ He just likes to stir the s**t, right. Ever since then, I think that brought us closer together. We’ve been best friends since.”