Adam Cole is now part of the AEW roster, and that's so far working out great for him. Rumour has it that had he remained in WWE, his main roster call-up would have involved a name change, a haircut, and potentially a managerial role (serving as Keith Lee's mouthpiece on RAW).
In AEW, he's being pushed as a top star and will be seen in action during tonight's episode of Rampage when he teams up with The Young Bucks to battle Christian Cage and the Jurassic Express.
Recently, Cole spoke to Chris Jericho on Le Champion's Talk is Jericho podcast and opened up on that meeting with Vince McMahon. Saying their 30-minute conversation "went really well," he added: "[Vince] was very complimentary and very nice. The idea was for me to go to RAW or SmackDown and not stay in NXT, just because I had been there for so long. That was the gist of the conversation. It was definitely to move me up to RAW or SmackDown."
"Apparently, there were a lot of ideas, but they were very vague about exactly what they wanted to do," Cole said of potential creative plans for him. "I remember when I first had the conversation, they mentioned something about, ‘Maybe we’ll do a name change, or maybe we’ll change your look a little bit’, so that scared me a little bit. I just spent nearly 14 years as Adam Cole."
"In our latest conversation, they were definitely more open to me being me and being myself," he added. "They could tell I was not too thrilled about the idea."
It sounds like a short-haired Adam Cole without the same surname as announcer Michael Cole was just an early idea rather than the big plan for his main roster debut, but it's still hard to believe Vince had any big plans for the former NXT Champion. It's become apparent in recent years that the WWE Chairman doesn't understand these NXT call-ups, and aside from the odd name or two, they wind up quickly falling by the wayside and getting buried.
We'll never know because Adam Cole is now All Elite, BAY-BAY!