Adam Cole Reveals Which WWE Star Inspired His Catchphrase
Adam Cole credits one current and another former WWE star for his "Adam Cole, bay-bay!" catchphrase.
Chris Jericho and Joey Mercury played a role in the origin of the phrase, as Cole discussed during a recent appearance on Steve Austin's podcast.
"Man, so totally by mistake, actually, so I'm a huge Chris Jericho fan and I'm also a huge Joey Matthews fan, Joey Mercury. So obviously, Chris Jericho used to always exaggerate 'baby' to the point where he would say, 'baybay'. But really, the whole reason I started saying my name and 'baybay' at the end was because I was watching Joey Matthews on these independent shows and when Joey Matthews was working as a heel, he used to over and over again put his arms in the air and yell, 'Joey Matthews! Joey Matthews!' and I was like, 'that's brilliant because if anybody doesn't know who he is, everybody is going to know who he is by the end of this match! Initially, it was just 'Adam Cole, baby!' Then it got more and more exaggerated and then people started doing it with me. Initially, when I first started doing it, no one would do it. They hated it and thought it was terrible, so it's amazing that that [has] gotten over now. That's something people can't wait to do at my entrance or in the ring or anything like that. But I got it over! It took me years, but I got it over."
Cole has had three reigns as Ring of Honor World Champion — the most ever. There has been plenty of speculation about the future of Cole, whose last reign ended in March at the hands of Christopher Daniels.
Cole recently told Busted Open Radio that he was under ROH contract for about another month… after which point we might be hearing that same phrase inside a WWE or NXT ring.