Adam Cole’s match during the November 1, 2019 episode of WWE SmackDown was a last-minute call according to the man himself.
During that show, several NXT Superstars were called in as travel delays stemming from WWE Crown Jewel 2019 resulted in much of the roster being unavailable.
On the show, Cole, the NXT Champion at the time, defended his title against Daniel Bryan, one of the few big names who had not gone to Saudi Arabia.
Appearing on the latest “Swerve City” podcast, Cole recounted how this match came to be. He said,
“It was like 1 p.m., and I was walking around in shorts, no shirt on, just casually making some food, and I got a phone call, and they said, ‘Hey, you need to get on an airplane. I’m going to send you the address. You need to be there in an hour,.
“I got the address a minute later, and the airport was 50 minutes from where I was from. So I had 10 minutes to throw all my stuff in a bag, and then rush to this airport.”
Cole made it to the arena by 8:30 PM EST thanks to the assistance of a police escort in Buffalo, New York, and was facing Bryan in the ring within an hour. He added,
“I’ll tell you what the beautiful thing was about that. I didn’t have time to be nervous.”
Cole and Danielson would cross paths years later in AEW, with the two men debuting at the All Out 2021 pay-per-view event.
