After months of inaction, Adam Cole returned to AEW on the January 11th edition of AEW Dynamite.
Tony Schiavone was in the ring for a moment until Adam Cole’s music played and got a massive ovation from the crowd. After Schiavone left, Cole grabbed a microphone and asked, “Who’s ready for story time?”
At first, Cole played the situation off as a good news/bad news deal. He began his promo explaining what he had been through since his last match back in June 2022. He described getting multiple MRIs, seeing many doctors, and dealing with both a torn-up shoulder and two back-to-back head injuries.
He also got a bit emotional as he described having the urge to vomit when being in a car for fifteen minutes and waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety and being unable to tell anyone around him what was wrong.
But despite all of this, Adam Cole put a positive spin on the situation by praising and thanking the fans for never giving up on him and constantly sending him well wishes as he navigated through this difficult situation.
And then the bad news came…sort of.
Cole played to the audience and said that there was some bad news to be discussed…but it wasn’t for or about Adam Cole:
“The bad news is for the AEW locker room because Adam Cole is back!”
“I AIN’T DONE YET” – Adam Cole
After getting a monstrous reaction from the crowd, Cole concluded with a promise that one day he’ll be at the top of the mountain.
Adam Cole’s last big match in AEW was at Forbidden Door when he was involved in a Four-Way match for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship that also involved Adam Page, Jay White, and Kazuchika Okada.
According to most sources, Cole suffered a serious concussion at some point in that match which caused him to be sidelined. Updates on Cole’s condition throughout the latter half of 2022 were few and far between as AEW took a cautious approach to his recovery.