As much of a wrestling smark as I can sometimes be, I’m not going to pretend like I knew much about Adam Cole prior to his arrival in NXT.  I knew of his name, and that he was a guy that was pretty big in Ring of Honor, but frankly I didn’t even know what he looked like.  When he showed up in NXT and superkicked Drew McIntyre, my knee-jerk reactions was that he was kind of a Shawn Michaels clone, in look, ring presence and the fact that he whipped out a superkick as the very first thing on screen.

Over the following weeks, I watched Cole with interest and naturally read up on his career up to date on Wikipedia, but I had this suspicion that he was probably going to be an entertaining guy to watch.  Between all the matches he had jobbing to Aleister Black, War Games and his other sporadic appearances, it’s safe to say that I felt that he was a really good talent, and was among the guys I looked forward to seeing the most on episodes of NXT.

When NXT announced the creation of the NXT North American Championship, and that the inaugural champion would be crowned during a six-man ladder match, I kind of cringed when I saw that Adam Cole was tabbed as one of the contenders for the new belt.  But at the same time, I had a sinking suspicion that he was the one most likely to win the belt, because the whole Undisputed Era stable seemed like one of the things going to be relied upon to carry the brand over the next calendar year, and there would be no more serious way to bolster them than to have Adam Cole himself getting his hands on some hardware.

And true to prophecy, Adam Cole did win the North American Championship, and I was a combination of happy to see a guy I enjoyed watching win a title, unsurprised because I kind of figured this was going to happen, but at the same time a little bit disappointed that Cole won it.

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