Current NXT Champion Adam Cole recently defended his title against Johnny Gargano in a competitive Two-Out-Of-Three Falls matchup. The two competed for the gold at WWE’s recent NXT TakeOver: Toronto event over SummerSlam weekend.
In an interview with Lilian Garcia for her podcast, Chasing Glory, Adam Cole spoke about the matchup, and what the backstage reaction was once their bout had concluded.
“This Feud Started Like A Replacement To Tommaso Ciampa”
“I’m definitely incredibly sore from that one,” Cole admitted. “I don’t know how many of those I have in me. This trilogy with Johnny was so important to me and him. We’ve known each other for 10 years. So we had talked forever about getting the chance to maybe wrestle on a really big stage like NXT.”
“This kind of – this feud started, almost, like a replacement to Tomasso Ciampa, ‘cause Johnny and Tommaso were in the middle of their big feud,” he said. “So then, they needed a big main event for WrestleMania weekend, and were like, ‘Okay, let’s do Adam and Johnny.’ And then it turned into this crazy trilogy that had its punctuation mark last night and ended all in that wrestling street fight and crazy steel cage match. It was a lot of fun. Painful, but a lot of fun. And Toronto was great. I love wrestling in Toronto.”
When he came back behind the curtain, Cole described how “everyone was applauding”, and he was greeted with hugs and handshakes. Despite the praise, he shared that he still looks for flaws in his performance.
“I look for it, yeah,” he confessed. “I obsess on – to me, I’ve never had, I know everyone feels this way, but I’ve never had and will never have the perfect match. But I’m going to try so hard to get it. I’ll find 10 different things that I’m like, ‘Oh I didn’t like this, or this could’ve been a little bit better,’ I’m proud of it, for sure. And I’m happy with it. But I definitely don’t think I’ve ever had a match that, start to finish, it was exactly what I wanted. But sometimes that’s not necessarily a bad thing either.”
Adam Cole was the only member of Undisputed Era to leave NXT TakeOver: Toronto with a championship, as the stable continue their attempts to drape themselves with gold.
H/T to Wrestlezone for the transcription.