Former NXT Champion Adam Cole will be a free agent by the end of this week. Following his loss to Kyle O’Reilly at Saturday’s NXT Takeover 36 event, Cole will be free to negotiate with other wrestling promotions as early as this weekend.
As we’ve covered here in recent weeks, WWE officials were recently caught off guard when they discovered Adam Cole’s WWE contract had expired. There was a scramble to tie him up in a short-term extension, so he could compete at NXT Takeover 36, as advertised. Fightful notes that Cole will be a free man on Friday, August 27th.
According to multiple sources, the prevailing belief is that Cole has wrestled his final match for WWE. You can be sure the company will go to great lengths in an effort to re-sign Cole. He’ll have a lot of thinking to do over the next several days.
Talk Sport reports that an important stipulation of Cole’s short-term WWE contract extension is that he would NOT be held to a non-compete clause. afterwards. “As part of the extension, Cole also managed to ‘kill the non-compete clause’ he would have had to fulfill.
Theoretically, he would be free to sign with a different company this weekend and appear on “the other channel” as soon as next week. That could present a lot of interesting options for Cole.
Cole’s girlfriend, AEW Women’s Champion Britt Baker, just did an interview discussing the possibility of a mixed tag match featuring Baker & Cole vs. CM Punk and AJ Lee. It seems outlandish, but that match could happen this year in an AEW ring.
More on that story here:
Adam Cole’s Choice
Adam Cole joined WWE and NXT back in 2017. He’s been one of the franchise players of the black and gold brand over the past several years. He’s done everything there is to do in NXT, so he’ll need to decide if he envisions himself on WWE’s main roster.
Cole is an avid streamer of video games on the popular Twitch platform. WWE has a policy that talent cannot have their own channels on services like Twitch. However, Cole recently stated that his Twitch channel is not going anywhere.
“There’s been a lot going on lately and I want to make sure everyone knows that this is going nowhere,” he said. “It’s going absolutely nowhere.”
More on that story below.
