Adam Cole reflects on his match with Kyle O'Reilly at Ring of Honor Best in the World 2012.
Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly have experienced many career parallels. Another such moment came at ROH Best in the World 2012, where the then-former tag team partners clashed in what was known as a Hybrid Fighting Rules Match. Reflecting on that match over a decade later, Adam Cole has called that event his favorite match in New York City and his favorite moment in New York City.
"My favorite memory [in New York City] is my favorite match that I was involved in that took place in New York because I get asked this question a lot. So New York City is incredibly important to me because in 2012, me versus Kyle O'Reilly took place at a Ring of Honor pay-per-view, ROH Best in the World 2012. It was in the Hammerstein Ballroom, which was super exciting. Me and Kyle were in this feud with each other, and we had to have this match called a Hybrid Fighting Rules Match, which was a very confusing and convoluted match type that a lot of the fans weren't thrilled about," Adam recalled during an interview with Z100's Josh Martinez on Superstar Crossover. "At this point, me and Kyle, we're still very, very early in our wrestling careers. I feel like we had the respect of the fans where they would pay attention to what we were doing, but we weren't over yet, by any means. People weren't lining up to buy the shirts. People weren't screaming when our music hit. We were still kind of earning their respect. I'll put it to you that way."
Adam Cole says the New York City crowd would continue to greet him and Kyle with apathy until Kyle punched him in the mouth, busting him wide open.
"When this match was happening, the crowd was not into it at all in the beginning. They were trying to be respectful, but they were bored," Adam said. This is one of those matches where you had to be careful with how many punches you threw, rope breaks; it was super convoluted. Long story short, at one point, Kyle punched me in the mouth, and it split my lip where it was completely split in half, so much blood, I looked like a zombie. That changed the entire dynamic of the match. All of a sudden, those New York City fans, those rabid New York fans, were completely invested in this match.
"Everyone was standing on their feet. They're banging on the barricades. They're chanting 'This is awesome.' They're chanting 'Adam Cole.' At one point, I'm on my knees, and I flipped my hair up, and I yelled to fire up to Kyle, and blood is squirting out on his chest, and Kyle is standing there," Cole continues. "So the cool thing about it is, again, we're pretty young in our careers. We really changed a lot of what we were going to do and the dynamic of that match based on this little speed bump that we had, which actually made the match so much better. So from that point forward, me and Kyle O'Reilly's Ring of Honor careers really started to skyrocket. The next week, I won the ROH Television Title. I just had a different connection with the fans. So did Kyle. So that match is the most important match, to me, in my career. One of the important reasons is, again, those rabid New York City fans that just were having the time of their life."
To this day, Adam and Kyle continue to take a similar path in their career, as both are now members of the AEW roster. O'Reilly once reflected on "following" the former NXT Champion everywhere he goes. Read more here.
Elsewhere in this interview, Adam reflected on the first time he met Maxwell Jacob Friedman, MJF.
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