Adam Cole won his in-ring debut for AEW on this week’s AEW Dynamite, then immediately cut a promo on his disdain for Christian Cage, Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus. The trio has chased away The Elite twice in the past two weeks, but Cole declared that the SuperKliq (himself and The Young Bucks) could easily beat them in a six-man tag match at the AEW Rampage: Grand Slam special on Sept. 24. The three babyfaces accepted the challenge later in the show, prompting Cage to make a few comments about Cole’s old home in NXT.
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“I don’t know, Adam does have some pretty good friends. The Super Elite, they used their EVP status to throw them a lifeline and drag his sorry a— out of developmental,” Cage said. “Here’s the thing Adam, we accept your challenge. And you know what? Since you’re already to losing Wednesday Night Wars, you better add Friday nights to that list as well.”
Anybody who followed Cole during his four years in NXT knows he openly hated when people called the show NXT’s developmental brand.
“It bothers me a lot to some extent,” Cole said on After The Bell earlier this year. “I try to be a glass half full guy in a lot of ways, so I think there is an aspect to NXT or the Performance Center where of course there is developmental. Where there are people who get hired with wrestling experience, with no wrestling experience, with the process of hopefully getting to that point where they end up on NXT television. To say that the roster of the guys on NXT, as far as developmental goes, I really do believe that we are on the same level as the guys on Raw and as the guys on SmackDown. The process of development is something that happens all the time.
“I’ve been wrestling for 13 years and I’ve constantly been developing, I don’t ever want to get out of developmental. It’s so cool for me to be around guys like Shawn Michaels or Triple H or Matt Bloom who they themselves are very open to admitting they’re still learning. And if those guys are open about learning, we definitely better be open to it,” he continued. “I’ve always kept that mentality and thought process of if I’m not getting better every single year and every single match, then I’ve got to get out of it. I’m proudly developing in that sense.”
