By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

RADICAN’S ROH DVD REVIEW SERIES
ADAM COLE: PANAMA’S FINEST
BY SEAN RADICAN, TORCH COLUMNIST

Adam Cole is someone that saw his stock rise dramatically in 2012. Cole had a good year in ROH, but he didn’t get pushed to the top of the card which was what a lot of people were expecting after he pinned Davey Richards in the main event of the “10th Anniversary” iPPV. Later in the year Cole generated a lot of buzz for his heel work in PWG, particularly leading into BOLA 2012 weekend where he cut some fantastic heel promos leading into the two night tournament.

On the flip side, Cole’s biggest exposure has come from working in ROH where he’s been portrayed as a babyface wrestler in a predominantly mid-card role. Listening to Cole’s interview and watching his matches on this release, it’s clear that Cole has a mountain of untapped potential that has yet to be capitalized upon in ROH.

You can genuinely tell Cole loves wrestling when he talks about his first exposure to WWE when his karate instructor loaned him a copy of WrestleMania XV and after Cole saw the fan reaction to Rock vs. Austin in the main event, he knew he wanted to be a wrestler. Cole’s passion for wrestling pushed him towards wrestling magazines and eventually the internet where he found out about ROH and became a huge fan of wrestlers like C.M. Punk, Samoa Joe, Homicide, and Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan).

It is a lot of fun to listen to Cole discuss how he ended up training in the CZW Wrestling School and learned from wrestlers like D.J. Hyde, Al Snow, and Les Thatcher. The best parts of Cole’s interview included on this set are him discussing the advice he got from wrestlers in the locker room and how being in ROH has benefited him because he’s kept his ears open and learned so much.

Cole caught the eye of ROH officials by wrestling dark matches at HD Net tapings. Cole wasn’t sticking out, so he sent Adam Pearce a heel promo that caught his attention. Cole eventually was offered an ROH contract in 20110 just two years into his career. It’s odd that Cole doesn’t talk about how he was working EVOLVE and DGUSA shows before signing with ROH during this portion of the interview, as it’s a question that most fans who buy this release and are familiar with his career would expect him to answer.

Cole gives a lot of insight into how he was paired with Kyle O’Reilly as a tag team when both were signed to the company during the second half of 2010. ROH didn’t know what to do with them and Cole discusses how they quickly gelled as a unit, despite never tagging together before. It’s interesting to listen to Cole give his perspective on working with tag teams like The Briscoes and The Kings of Wrestling during WrestleMania weekend in 2011, which gave him and O’Reilly a lot of confidence at that time before they eventually were given a higher profile main event style of match against The American Wolves at “No Escape.”

Cole doesn’t have anything good or bad to say about the booking in ROH because he doesn’t talk about working with Delirious and Jim Cornette much at all. It seemed ROH had several opportunities to push Cole higher up the card multiple times last year, but never pulled the trigger and pushed him to the top of the card.

Cole doesn’t discuss much about what was going on behind the scenes when he pinned ROH World Champion Davey Richards when he teamed with Eddie Edwards against Richards and Kyle O’Reilly in a tag match at “10th Anniversary” in 2012 only to be booked in a Proving Ground match against Richards that eventually became an ROH World Title match at a house show in Dayton the next month that was one of the most poorly attended events in recent ROH history. Cole mentions that he was sad to see the end of Future Shock, but thrilled that he and O’Reilly were going to get a shot at being singles wrestlers in ROH.

Cole also looked to be primed to someone that could draw buzz for ROH after he unintentionally got busted open during his Hybrid Rules match against Kyle O’Reilly at the “Best in the World 2012,” but he only got a slightly bigger push as ROH TV Champion later in the year.

Cole’s discussion about his growth as a face is very interesting to listen to. Despite not getting pushed further up the card than expected, Cole did grow as a face in ROH after becoming the ROH TV Champion in July when he beat Roderick Strong on Sinclair TV. Cole seems to be someone that is constantly learning and taking in advice and playing the role of babyface champion in ROH seems to have made him feel more comfortable playing the role of a good guy than he was in the past.

Cole touches on his run with the ROH TV title and the launch of his feud with Matt Hardy, but at 75 minutes, the interview feels short in some ways because Cole only briefly touches on his run in PWG and CZW during the interview when expanded comments would have been interesting, although it’s understandable the company would want the interview to be ROH-centric.

Having grown up when the internet became a big influence on independent wrestling, Cole seems to definitely get what it takes to work heel and face on the independent scene. “The second you become cool in their eyes, it’s an uphill battle from there,” says Cole on working heel on the independents. Hopefully other heel workers on the independents that get cheered heavily at times listen to Cole discuss how he tries to stay one step ahead of fans when he works heel. It’s clear by just listening to Cole talk about his growth as a babyface and his evolution as a heel that one day he’s going to be a star on a bigger stage than ROH.

Overall thoughts: (8.0) At times, it’s hard to keep track of what Cole is talking about because his answers are spliced together with the questions being asked removed from the interview. It’s a noticeable detraction on this DVD set, which is disappointing given that ROH ramped up the production on this release with the interview shot in widescreen and much more wrestling footage was shown than ever before on a “best of” style release such as when Cole was telling certain stories about his ROH career.
Although more probing questions would have made for a more interesting interview during the portions of this release when his ROH careers is discussed, this is still a very good interview and there are a number of good matches on this release that are well-worth checking out, especially Cole’s Hybrid Rules match against O’Reilly and his first ROH World Title shot against Davey Richards.

You can purchase this release at ROHWrestling.com

Please click HERE and click “like” to join the Radican’s Wrestling Community Facebook fan page.

Follow Sean on Twitter at Twitter.com/SeanRadican

Contact Sean at PWTorchSean@gmail.com

We suggest these recent related articles...

RADICAN'S Beyond Wrestling "Greatest Rivals Round Robin" review 9/26 - incredible show of the year contender, Busick-Edwards top-flight MOTYC, more!

RADICAN'S "The Pull List" (Vol. 5) "Young Bucks Too Sweet Journey" doc review, The Flash season 1 Blu-Ray, Top Ten MOTYC for 2015

RADICAN'S ROH "All-Star Extravaganza VII" PPV BLOG 9/18: Booking issues dampen excellent in-ring action