Adam Cole Recalls Dealing With Scary Head Injury

Adam Cole dealt with some serious injuries in 2022 due to multiple concussions and he has shed some light on what he dealt with.

On the January 11th edition of AEW Dynamite, Adam Cole made a surprise appearance to announce that he is going to be wrestling again after spending the last six months recovering from two serious concussions.

During the discussion with Wrestling Observer Radio, Adam Cole confirmed he got his first concussion against Samoa Joe at AEW Double or Nothing in May 2022. Cole added that his second concussion came at the AEW-NJPW Forbidden Door in June 2022. Cole spoke about how he was concerned that he may never wrestle again.

“I think that was definitely the scariest process, aside from the fact that, again, any time you get a head injury, it’s always a little bit scary. But for me, the scariest part was after like a month had gone by. The first three weeks to a month, you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m recovering, I’m just healing. I’m gonna be fine. I’m not gonna have any side effects. Everything will be great.’ The crazy thing was that after even a month, it was like that’s when real serious side effects started happening.”

“Literally, everything I said in my return in-ring promo that I did, all of that was true, and more. There was a lot of stuff that was happening very late into the healing process, or what I thought was late, like a month-and-a-half, two months. But I was genuinely very, very nervous, and really afraid that I might be told I’m not allowed to wrestle again. For me, I have a tendency lots of times where, when I get bad news, I just assume the worst. I mentally prepare myself to go, ‘Okay, I’m gonna have to deal with this new chapter of my life.’”

“Of course, I had the hope and dream of being able to get back in there. But just with all the news I was getting, how I was feeling, I’m like, oh my god, I can’t be in a car for more than 15 minutes, and it’s been two months. How am I ever gonna get into a wrestling ring again? But fortunately, I’ve said this before too, but the doctors that I had around me, AEW by the way was fantastic through this entire process.”

“It was like I barely had to think, it was like so many things were set up for me that, in the middle of all this, where I was seeing doctors like three times a week, they just wanted to make sure I was healthy and feeling okay. I was constantly being checked on. So in that sense it was wonderful, but again, I did have a genuine fear of, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to do this. I’m 33 years old, and I’m not even close to wanting to be done with wrestling yet. So it was scary.”

Adam Cole spoke about what he was dealing with going into the Forbidden Door pay-per-view and how he no recollection of what he was supposed to do in the match.

“I had taken a few weeks off, getting ready for Forbidden Door. I had passed every single test I had to take. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’m good to go.’ Then again, at the Forbidden Door matchup, the strangest thing about is, I remember feeling really good. I had taken a bump where I felt a little bit weird, but it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was a normal bump. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, okay. That felt a little strange.’”

“About 30 seconds go by, and then it’s like I have no recollection or memory of what I’m supposed to do, what happened in the match. The memory stuff is the really, really scary part to me, when you’re in the middle of a ring and there’s thousands of people around you, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“That was really scary. So I knew pretty early on after my memory started going that something was wrong. Once again, got to the back and got checked out. That one was really scary because they were so close to each other. It wasn’t just scary because of how close they were to each other. But what really scared me a lot, and this was part of where the concern of if I’m gonna be able to wrestle again came from, is I didn’t do anything insane. It wasn’t this dramatic move or this insanely dangerous move that I had taken.”

“It was a standard pro wrestling match, where now I’m at a point where I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing, where I am, or what’s going on. That really created a lot of fear in me, and I think a lot of fear in a lot of the doctors as well. So that’s kind of what happened. It felt like this domino effect of first it was the shoulder, then it was the head, then it was okay, let’s rest three or four weeks, and then it was the head again. It was definitely the scariest part of my career, I think, in the 15 years I’ve been doing this.”

The good news is that Adam Cole has made it clear he is doing a lot better now and we should be seeing him in the AEW ring again very soon.

Thanks to Fightful for the transcript.