Adam Cole did an interview with Sports Illustrated to promote Sunday’s AEW Revolution pay-per-view event. This is where he reflected on the November 1, 2019, episode of SmackDown where NXT stars were used on the show as main roster stars were stuck in Saudi Arabia.
He defended the NXT Title against Bryan Danielson on that SmackDown show. Cole spoke highly of Triple H and Shawn Michaels as they gave him a lot of confidence.
“Both Hunter [Paul “Triple H” Levesque] and Shawn gave me this unspoken confidence,” Cole says. “They put me into this next gear and gave me this championship mentality. That night, neither Hunter nor Shawn talked about the stakes, the stress or how everyone there was counting on me. They trusted my ability, that I could get on a plane that afternoon and wrestle later that night on SmackDown against one of the top stars in the industry.”
“They didn’t bat an eye; they knew we were going to tear the house down,” Cole says. “Triple H and Shawn Michaels were instrumental to my career. I learned so much from them that I will carry with me for the rest of my career. Being in that environment taught me certain aspects of my game that I didn’t know before I was there. That’s benefited me in a lot of ways. That’s given me an edge in AEW, too. Two of the greatest to ever do it had full faith and belief in me. I’ll never forget that. So I know I deserve to be in this spot and deserve to be in this role.”
