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Adam Cole is a lot of things. Hes a two-time (and current) Ring of Honor world champion, a member of the wildly popular Bullet Club faction and a storyteller. But first and foremost, like so many of the fans who passionately cry out Bay Bay every time they hear his name, Cole is an endlessly passionate student of the craft and history of professional wrestling.Coles first conscious memories of the squared circle are probably a lot like yours, if you were a child of a certain age. At 9 years old, he caught a few precious moments of an episode of WCW Thunder before his dad turned off the TV and ushered him off to the dinner table.When I first discovered that professional wrestling existed, it was going through that transitional period where it was becoming more violent, more risqué, more TV-14, said Cole. So initially, I was not permitted at all to watch pro wrestling.In fact, it wasnt until a chance encounter that Cole stumbled upon an opportunity that would change his life.Fast-forward to a point in my life where I was taking karate lessons as a kid; I really enjoyed that, and I used to get there early and stay there late -- I just loved it, Cole said. I got there early one day, and my instructor was watching a taped Monday Night Raw from the night before.I was watching it while he was checking it out, and he asked, Oh, do you watch wrestling? and I said, Yeah, all the time, Cole continued. But Id never watched it before. I just wanted to fit in with him. Long story short, he lets me borrow WrestleMania 15, and I saw Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock for the first time. I remember just thinking, These guys are the coolest guys Ive ever seen in my life.When he watched that no-disqualification main event between The Rock and Austin, there was a moment when Cole was instantly hooked -- a moment that gave him goosebumps and changed his life. When the iconic glass crashing of Austins entrance hit, Cole knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.By the time Cole was a high school senior, he began to look seriously at wrestling schools near his childhood home in Pennsylvania. It was (and still is) a hotbed for wrestling schools, and whichever one he chose to attend after graduating high school could have sent him in any number of directions in his career.I was considering a bunch of different options, said Cole. There was the Wild Samoan training center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. For a while, I was considering the Chikara Wrestle Factory in Philadelphia, too. It got to a point where, because I was such a big fan of wrestling, I started to follow more promotions -- and one of them was called Combat Zone Wrestling, in South Philadelphia.CZW cultivated a reputation over the years for having some of the most brutal and violent hard-core matches in the world of independent wrestling, including numerous bouts featuring Jon Moxley (now Dean Ambrose in the WWE) and Drake Younger (now WWE NXT referee Drake Wuertz), among many others.Still, that style of match wasnt everything that CZW was about, and a young, impressionable Cole took a chance to try to meet some of the wrestlers and operators of CZW after attending Best of the Best 7 -- an annual tournament that Cole was quite familiar with and fond of.I was out back, waiting to meet everybody, and one of the guys who walked out was DJ Hyde, who is the head trainer of the CZW wrestling academy. For whatever reason, I build up enough courage to tell him, By the way, when I graduate high school Im gonna train to be a pro wrestler someday, Cole said. And he stopped, and he turned and looked at me, and he asked, Why dont you wrestle now?Cole, surprised for a moment by the question, rattled off all of the reasons that a high schooler wouldnt be able to make it work without dropping out of college: He didnt have the money. His parents would obviously be apprehensive. And the two-hour drive each way would be challenging, to say the least.DJ Hyde extended an olive branch that would ultimately make a tremendous impact on the years that followed.He said, Listen, Ill work with you on money -- you pay me what you can, when you can, and you only have to come down one day a week, Cole recalled. The following week, I started training as a pro wrestler.I talked to the three [aspiring wrestlers] and told them they needed to do a tryout, said Hyde. The three of them all had a lot of potential -- Adam was not the guy he is now, but you could see something. He said, This is all I ever wanted to do.I use him as an example to the current students -- he wanted it more than anybody else -- anyone Ive ever seen, said Hyde. He was born to do this.Cole wouldve jumped at any opportunity to get into a wrestling ring as soon as humanly possible, and he simply couldnt deny an offer to train at CZW. In November 2007, Cole started down the long and winding path of an independent wrestling career. By the time he graduated high school, Coles career was already in motion.He quickly discovered that it wasnt all about learning to bump or mastering an in-ring technique. Coles persistence and willingness to reach out to those who could help him in some way in his career was as valuable a skill as any hed pick up in the ring.For independent wrestling, making connections is so important, said Cole. Part of that process is traveling all over the country and going wherever you can, even if youre not on the event. Its the idea of showing up and meeting people and watching matches -- just creating relationships with people.One relationship that allowed Cole to take another monumental step was with an Australian wrestler who was touring in the States and had started attending the Ring of Honor wrestling school.When offered an opportunity to train with some of the brightest up-and-coming wrestlers on the independent scene, he simply couldnt pass it up.So I went down there, and I started training, said Cole. The head trainer, Delirious, was there, and he will hate that I say this, but hes one of the smartest men in wrestling. I instantly knew that from the moment I met him. [Being there] really kind of took my understanding of pro wrestling to the next level.At that point in time, around 2008 or 2009, Delirious was still an active performer for Ring of Honor. As he picked up more and more things in the ring, Cole asked if he could start attending shows. He did everything he could -- he helped set up chairs and the ring, served as security and a guy just there to get beat up.Cole started on his long path to stardom in ROH in 2009, when he had his first dark match for the company. As hard as he worked to impress those in charge behind the curtain, Cole quickly found himself hitting a wall creatively.I did dark matches with Ring of Honor for a year and a half, said Cole. And I got the same response every single time I got to the back -- Good job, keep it up. That was cool the first two or three times, but then it was like, OK, what do I have to do differently to kind of stand out more?By tapping into what is now one of his most valuable tools in the ring, Cole utilized his personality to get noticed.I end up sending a promo in, and at the time the booker Adam Pearce saw that and said, OK, were gonna have you cut a promo in the ring as dark, said Cole. So instead of doing a match, I was actually talking, which was cool. Jim Cornette happened to be paying attention to the promo, and the rest was history. From there on out, they saw something in me that they had not been seeing while I was wrestling, and that kind of gave me the opportunity to shine, and to get a real chance with ROH.Cole would soon find himself under contract with ROH, and hed get paired up with another young upstart, Kyle OReilly. Books could be written about their partnership and eventual rivalry that carries on to this day, but in short, they teamed up under the moniker Future Shock and got to wrestle against some of the best in the world, including the Kings of Wrestling (Cesaro and Chris Hero), the Briscoes and former WWE tag team champions Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas, among many others.It was against Haas and Benjamin, collectively known as the Worlds Greatest Tag Team, that Cole received his first championship match in ROH. While he and OReilly failed to win the titles, the pair proved themselves worthy of the label of being future stars with the company. The pair soon split, but went right at it on opposite sides of another budding rivalry between the tag team formerly known as The American Wolves -- a conflict that ultimately shaped the careers of all four men.It was me and Eddie Edwards against Kyle OReilly and ROH world champion Davey Richards, said Cole. That moment for us was Ring of Honor telling our fans, OK, these guys are main event guys now. At that point in my career, it was the most pressure I had ever felt -- because the fans are either going to bite on this, or they werent, so you really, really have to deliver.Cole not only managed to hold his own in that match at ROHs 10th anniversary show, entitled Young Wolves Rising, but he got the biggest victory of his career to that point. He pinned Richards -- the reigning ROH champion at the time -- in the main event of a major show at the Hammerstein Ballroom, and it was the catalyst for even bigger things to come. After dispatching OReilly in a grudge match three months later in that very same venue, Cole won his first championship in ROH by defeating Roderick Strong for the television championship in June 2012.By the end of the year, hed get the first world title win of his career by defeating Kevin Steen (Kevin Owens) for the Pro Wrestling Guerilla world heavyweight championship.It was scary man, said Cole. I was 22 or 23 at that time, being put in a position where youre Ring of Honor television champion and the PWG world champion. This is no knock on the ROH television championship at all, but this was the first time any company had ever said, OK, youre our No. 1 guy, and were expecting these shows to do well with you on top.Hed ultimately go on to become a cult hero and the longest reigning PWG world champion in the companys history, but those concurrent title reigns -- despite being career-defining achievements -- offered little time for Cole to appreciate what hed been able to do at such a young age.The thing that I regret the most, I think, looking back at that period of my life, was I didnt really get to enjoy it too much, Cole said. I was so concerned and focused on doing better and improving. But at the same time, thats part of what success is -- getting better is about never settling, and realizing that you do have to always push forward and improve. Sometimes you cant sit back and smell the roses.Its a tough balance to strike for a guy whos been as motivated as Cole. He has little issue taking care of business in the gym, with his diet and in studying tapes, but he occasionally falls victim to losing the big picture simply because he keeps his head down and keeps pushing toward greatness.The fear of failure with me is very real, said Cole. I think the idea of me being 50 years old and thinking, Where could my career have been if I just worked a little bit harder is a really tough pill to swallow -- and it scares me to death.Over the entirety of his career, Cole has been able to push down those fears and keep them at bay by working as hard as possible. The results speak for themselves, with Cole earning the highest honor of his career in September 2013 by winning the ROH world championship.Sometimes fate simply intervenes, though. The process was taken out of his hands entirely in late 2014, when a serious shoulder injury put him on the shelf for the longest stretch of his career.Its very, very hard to walk away from something that means a lot to you, [especially] not having that escape that wrestling has always been for me. When I was forced to miss four months of action because of shoulder, tricep and elbow surgery, it was tough -- and, of course, when it rains it pours. My grandmother passed away while I was out injured, and while I normally would have just focused on wrestling, I just sat at home and really had to deal with that.After losing his grandmother, his No. 1 supporter and one of the most important people in his life, Cole sat back and reset his life and career. As he neared his return in May 2015, Cole was able to draw some positives from his time away from wrestling.While the year following Coles return was a net positive, with a number of big matches, things werent quite clicking as well as they were before his injury. That all changed in May 2016, when Cole made a surprise appearance in the midst of a Jay Lethal-Colt Cabana ROH world championship match and revealed himself as the newest member of the Bullet Club.That was soon followed by a second world championship reign, and almost everything Cole has done as part of the Bullet Club has been a revelation in his career. Hes having some of the best matches of his career, including a recent five-star match in PWG, hes getting to live out his dreams of wrestling in New Japan Pro Wrestling and the future looks bright.Still, no matter how much he tries to appreciate it all in the moment, his desire to squeeze every last drop out of his career can be overwhelming.When I win something like the Ring of Honor championship for a second time, Im excited for a minute, but Im already thinking, How can I win for a third time? Whats my next goal? said Cole. Whats the next mountain I have to climb? I dont ever want to become content.Cole is always striving for the next step in his career. Hes incredibly happy with his current position -- which has him on top in ROH, able to work in NJPW, PWG and top Mexican promotion CMLL -- but even if its two, three or five years down the line, it would be foolish to discount his desire to one day perform in or even main event a WrestleMania.For the boy who grew up and fell in love with wrestling because of The Rock and Austin, and takes pride in having worked all the way up the ranks of professional wrestling, it might be the only way hell ever truly be able to take a breath and stop to smell the roses.Its all part of the journey, said Cole. In my dream pro-wrestling career, I would get to go and wrestle on all the corners of the planet -- get to wrestle for the smallest promotions all the way up to the biggest promotions. I love all the peaks and valleys. Jameer Nelson Pistons Jersey . It was the kind of score that might make everyone else wonder which course he was playing. Except that Graeme McDowell saw the whole thing. 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The FA rejected Wilsheres appeal that the length of his punishment was "clearly excessive" and said Thursday his suspension begins with immediate effect. He will miss league matches against Chelsea on Monday and West Ham on Dec. BOULDER, Colo. -- Xavier Johnson and Josh Fortune scored 14 points apiece and Colorado beat Louisiana-Monroe 89-70 Thursday night in a regional game of the Legends Classic.Derrick White and George King added 12 points each for Colorado (3-0), which is off to its best start since opening the 2012-13 season with six consecutive wins.It was Colorados 11th consecutive win at the Coors Events Center.Were not where we want to be, White said. We have to improve individually and collectively. Right now, we are 3-0, which was what our goal was to start. We just have to continue to improve.Jordon Harris had 15 points -- all on 3 pointers -- to lead Louisiana-Monroe (1-2). Travis Munnings and Marvin Jean-Pierre each added 12 points for the Warhawks, who have never beaten Colorado in three meetings.Up by 25 points at the half, Colorado maintained its double-digit lead the rest of the way, going in front by 27 points on Johnsons layup with 8:10 left. Louisiana-Monroe closed the gap somewhat in the late going after Colorado began substituting freely.King hit two 3-pointers in the opening minutes and helped Colorado break out to a 48-23 halftime lead. The Buffaloes led for all but 46 seconds of the period, when the game was briefly tied.BIG PICTURELouisiana-Monroe: Last time out, in an 80-59 loss to Texas, the Warhawks struggled offensively, particularly in the second half and finished by making just 30 percent of their shots from the field. It was more of the same against Colorado, only the Warhawks shooting woes surfaced from the outset. They converted 25 percent of their shots in the first half before starting to find the range in the second half, winding up converting 41.3 percent of their sshots.ddddddddddddColorado: Balanced scoring and depth has been a strength of Colorado in its 3-0 start. Ten of 12 players scored in the win over the Warhawks, including all five starters. And the Buffaloes did not let up despite their big lead. They kept the offensive pressure on Louisiana-Monroe throughout the game.IN TOUGHLouisiana-Monroe met its match and then some in consecutive losses to Texas and Colorado, and coach Keith Richard anticipated the Warhawks would be in tough against the teams, both members of Power 5 conferences. We lost five seniors, five very good players from last years team, he said. Im not surprised by the final score in both games. These are two good teams. Colorado is really good and theyre extra special here in Boulder.MEMORABLE STARTColorado freshman Bryce Peters, who was suspended for the first two games because of a team rule violation, made his first career basket a memorable one. Midway through the first half, he came up with a steal and then raced down the court for a breakaway dunk. He finished with nine points, including a 3-pointer off a feed from White, who rebounded a missed free throw just before the first-half buzzer.INJURY REPORTColorado junior guard Dominique Collier, who was limited to a few minutes of play Monday night against Seattle, could miss four to six weeks with a broken bone in his foot.UP NEXTLouisiana-Monroe: Travels to Cheney, Washington for a game Monday against Seattle.Colorado: Continues play in the 2016 Legends Classic on Monday when it will play Notre Dame at the Barclays Center in New York. ' ' '