Funny Story On Adam Cole’s First WWE Appearance

Look again. WWE has a lot of advantages over other wrestling companies at the moment and one of them is their incredibly deep talent pool. They have so many big names both in the present and for the future that it is hard to imagine them ever having a problem finding someone else to plug into a spot. However, they might need to work on their research, as it needed some work.

Earlier this month, Adam Cole celebrated one year as NXT Champion. That is quite the accomplishment and something that no one had achieved before. Cole looks like he could be one of the top stars in WWE for a long time to come and that is a great thing to see for the company. That being said, Cole almost showed up a lot sooner than anyone would have planned on.

Cole was interviewed by the Wrap and told a story of being contacted by WWE only a few months into his career. WWE said that they were interested in bringing him into FCW (the forerunner to NXT) for a tryout and even talked to him on the phone for thirty minutes. Eventually Cole was sent a flight itinerary and found the name Austin Watson, rather than his real name of Austin Jenkins. Watson is better known as Xavier Woods, so Cole sent WWE a photo of himself and explained the mixup. WWE apologized and booked Cole as an extra on SmackDown, showing him in a bar drinking with Serena Deeb to make up for it.

It was quite the cameo. Check out the role that Cole received as an apology:

Opinion: Thankfully Cole had a good laugh about this because it’s a rather embarrassing mistake for WWE to make. He did seem to understand how rare it would be for a nineteen year old to be signed by WWE and he did eventually get there anyway. It’s the kind of thing that is good for a chuckle, though it wasn’t even the first time that WWE almost signed or even did sign the wrong wrestler.

What does the future hold for Cole? Will Woods ever be a star on his own? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!