EXCLUSIVE: ROH World Champion Adam Cole Talks His Future With The Company

Adam Cole is one of professional wrestling‘s made men.

At just the age of 27, he has become the first three-time Ring of Honor World Champion having defeated Kyle O’Reilly at WrestleKingdom 11, succeeded AJ Styles as leader of Bullet Club and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. At SuperCard of Honor, he will defend his ROH World Championship against the flamboyant Dalton Castle, but Cole has a new ally in the “American Nightmare” Cody nee Rhodes.

ComicBook had the chance to catch up to the champion at a recent TV taping in Atlanta to talk about adding Cody to Bullet Club, his thoughts on ROH having faith in him being the flagbearer, and his personal goals for 2017.

Back in July, Adam, we talked and you had just joined Bullet Club, and now you have Cody as the newest member. What do you think adding Cody to your ranks does for BC’s profile?

I think it’s been good, especially considering Cody’s profile since he’s left WWE and come to the independents. It’s clear as day that Cody is doing his best — his best effort, and he’s very much succeeding and having a good run in Ring of Honor, and having a good run in New Japan, and more importantly kind of just traveling the world. And Bullet Club is always looking for guys with an edge, and personality-wise Cody definitely has that edge, so it’s been good. It’s been really cool. I’m excited to start teaming with Cody, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, me and him teaming together.

So, there were a lot of rumors circulating at the beginning of the year that WWE was poaching ROH guys and everything like that. How do you think ROH can maintain their strong roster and do what they can with their roster to remain a major wrestling promotion?

Right. Well, I think the mindset ROH has had pretty much since its inception has always been developing new stars. That’s always been its mindset. Like people said the exact same thing when Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness left. They said Ring of Honor’s done, it’s toast. When CM Punk left everyone was worried about that. But Ring of Honor has managed to thrive, it’s managed to, it’s managed to continue to grow because the brand of Ring of Honor is what people are really, really interested in. So yeah, no matter — people leaving, people coming and going, there’s always a ton of new talent trying to make an impact, trying to make a name for themselves, so Ring of Honor will be just fine, no matter who leaves and who stays.

Springboarding off that — you know, Kenny Omega, made huge waves with his speech about how WWE is slowly becoming a monopoly. Do you really think that’s the case at all?

No? I mean I think WWE being the number one wrestling promotion in the world, it has things that it wants to do and things that it wants to accomplish, so in turn, because it’s such a large company, they’re always looking for new talent, and if they see that they can make money with somebody, of course, they’re going to try to hire them.

I think it has very little to do with WWE trying to ‘ruin’ wrestling, I see that a lot. A bunch of people think that WWE is so focused on trying to make sure that wrestling outside WWE doesn’t survive. No, I think they’re just trying to continue to grow, and obviously, that involves getting new talent. So, I don’t think so. I don’t think so.

Recently at WrestleKingdom, you know, you’re now a three-time ROH World Champion, the first in the company’s history. How do you feel that reflects upon you and the company, and them giving faith in you to basically bring ROH into the new year?

Yeah, that — the faith thing, I’m glad you said that because that was the most flattering part of the whole thing, is that, on three different occasions now, Ring of Honor has felt like okay, you’re going to be the company bearer, you’re going to be the flagbearer now. Because — the elite list of guys who have held the title one time is very select. Twice is even smaller. Three times, it’s never been done before. So, motivating is a word. Again, flattered. And really inspired. It puts you in this new kind of mindset or mind frame when you know that you’re the first one to do something, and for a company that means so much to me, like Ring of Honor does, it’s just, it’s taken my appreciation for this company and motivation within this company to a whole other level. It’s pretty surreal. It hasn’t really sunk in yet.

Exactly. If you look at Ring of Honor’s title history do you think that would be more prominent in the future for ROH? To do more title changes and everything to help get guys over — not the fact that you specifically need to get over or anything.

Sure, sure.

But to break that tradition of long title reigns. Because it seems like somebody would just hold a belt here for a little while and then like, go elsewhere.

Right. Yes, I think certainly the cases of multi-time champions could 100% be more apparent just because the company has been around longer now. So there are more guys who have the opportunity to win the belt more than once. There are guys who are very committed to Ring of Honor and aren’t going anywhere, so they obviously have a chance to win the belt more than one time. The longer the company is around, the more opportunities there are for people to win the belt more than one time. Still, Ring of Honor at its core has always been a company that is very focused on when they do have a champion, that’s kind of their guy. Of course, there are circumstances where guys, you know, lose the championship fairly quick, or people expected a longer title reign because that’s what keeps things interesting.

If every time the Ring of Honor champion held the belt a minimum of six months, the first six months would be brutal, you know, after fifteen years, so we need to keep people on their toes. So I don’t think the Ring of Honor championship will ever lose its prestige or value or respect, but I do think it’s very possible that five years from now we will have another three-time champion. I do think that’s possible.

I mean I hope not! But we’ll see.

Obviously! So, you know, you’re becoming basically this global figure and everything like that. You constantly promoteyourself “I’m only 27, guys!” What does this do? So what does 2017 hold for Adam Cole?

I don’t know, man. I’ve uh, I’ve said this since I was 20 years old. When I was 18, I was really focused on what the next ten years were going to be for me. I was obsessed with it. I was like, where am I — this is where I need to go, this is where I need to end up, I need to have this title, I need to wrestle this guy, I was way too focused on the future. Ever since I was like, in my early 20s, I decided that I was going to focus and take everything a day at a time. The reason being is that there’s so much of wrestling that you can’t control. I can’t decide who likes me and who wants to book me. I can’t decide what the fans feel, they can change on a whim at any time. So all I can focus on is what I can do to make myself better.

But if we’re talking short term here, what I’m seeing for my year, obviously I want to have the best ROH title run I’ve had in my life, and number two, I’m just getting my feet wet in New Japan Pro-Wrestling. I feel like there’s a lot left for me to do there. I feel like there’s a lot of new obstacles that I’m wanting to take on over in New Japan. So, yeah, as far as 2017, it’s a lot of focus on again, this Ring of Honor championship, and kind of making a name for myself in New Japan Pro-Wrestling.