Adam Cole was on the losing end of a Two-Out-of-Three Falls Match with Kyle O’Reilly at NXT TakeOver 36 on Sunday night. And based on the reports that immediately followed the match, Cole’s days on the Black and Gold Brand are over. PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that Cole’s match with O’Reilly was intended to be his final bout on the brand. As for Cole’s status in the company overall, Fightful had reported in recent weeks that his contract was on the verge of expiring and that he had signed a short-term extension earlier this summer that would carry through SummerSlam weekend. Sean Ross Sapp then reported via Fightful Select that, as of Sunday morning, Cole had not signed a new deal.
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Neither Cole nor WWE officials have officially confirmed if he is leaving the company. Stay tuned for further updates.
Cole has remained purposefully quiet about his future over the past few weeks, though he did confirm last week that his Twitch channel was going to stay online regardless of where he went next.
“I love you all so much,” Cole said during a stream. “I wish so bad that I could just stream for a few more hours. But it makes me so happy to even stream for a little bit, and it’s why when I say, no matter what, there is a 0% chance that this channel is ever going away. I will never give this up. I love it with my whole entire heart and I love you guys. That’s how important you are to me, because you guys make me feel very important. There’s been a lot going on lately, and I just want to make sure everyone knows this is going nowhere. This is going absolutely nowhere.”
Prior to all of the reports coming out, the former Grand Slam Champion talked about his frustration with the perception some fans have over NXT still being WWE’s developmental brand
“It bothers me a lot to some extent,” Cole told After The Bell. “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.”
