Kyle O’Reilly Comments On Future Of His WWE NXT Feud With Adam Cole
Former WWE NXT Tag Team Champion Kyle O'Reilly was on the latest episode of Pro Wrestling 4 Life with Sean "X-Pac" Waltman. During the conversation they discussed O'Reilly's performance at NXT Takeover: Stand And Deliver, and O'Reilly explained the story heading into the match.
"I think the idea, from a storyline perspective is that Adam took me out, injured my neck and I wasn't medically cleared in time for Takeover, so WWE washes their hands of it. We sign an unsanctioned contract so that whatever happens, me competing with injury, they can't face an legal repercussions," O'Reilly explained. "From a storyline standpoint, that makes it cool.
"Although, it's hard to go from the first match straight to an unsanctioned, street fight no DQ type of match. Usually, you build up and grow from there and then you go to the unsanctioned stuff. So that's a little challenging. I don't know if we'll continue this, or if we have to go back to wrestling normal matches. Who knows?"
Waltman highlighted the technical wrestling in the match and how O'Reilly carried himself like a weapon. O'Reilly explained how there was a sense of realism behind it.
"The weapons, those are the tools that Kyle O'Reilly would use to to hurt someone," O'Reilly noted. "So why wouldn't I use it in this setting, right? If I got into a street fight for real with someone, I'd probably try and grab a double wrist lock."
Waltman later asked if O'Reilly if he or Cole were seriously hurt after the match.
"Just regular soreness. So, I will say this, since it's the year of the pandemic, and everything's crazy, and we're hardly working now and the matches are fewer and far in between, I feel we're not as calloused. A regular match bangs me up a lot more than it would be if we were working regularly on TV multiple times a week," O'Reilly admitted. "It was kind of easy then, but on the other hand, we've had so much time off that all those nagging injuries sort of healed, and so I feel better.
"There was even, I think, way more people than there's been in the last year. The Takeover where I wrestled Finn, I think there was only maybe 40 people there. So it's definitely different, and it's unique, but it's kind of cool too. For a guy that does my style where there's a lot of physical contact, you can kind of hear those things connect a little better, and the physicality seems a little more brutal and a little more real. We're wrestling for the cameras anyways. That's kind of the idea. So make it work."
O'Reilly also described what it is like to wrestle in the Capitol Wrestling Center.
"I'm definitely always still listening to the people and the reaction, but there's kind of a mix of a pumped in crowd noise. It's kind of hard, but they do such a good job of communicating to us through the refs," O'Reilly noted. "The refs are giving us so much help in time cues and positioning. "Pick it up. Pick it up.' The guys in the back obviously have their vision of things, and they, more often than not, are 100% right, so they do a good job of communicating with us."
Waltman presumed that Shawn Michaels was the producer on the unsanctioned match and asked O'Reilly if that was the case.
"He definitely had a huge role to play. Our actual producer was Terry Taylor," O'Reilly revealed. "Shawn and Hunter both are so hands-on with pretty much everything we're doing. They're basically producing it anyways with a ton of help and suggestions, and their insight is always so creative and so helpful. This is amazing. I'm getting input from Shawn Michaels about what to do in my match. It's crazy."
"I learned so much from Terry Taylor. You would not believe it," Waltman added. "He was the first guy that I worked with on the road on my first set of house shows. He was incredible man."
"He's a great mind," O'Reilly agreed. "He really cares about the integrity of the business. He wants it to look as believable and as well done as possible, so you can't take that away from him at all."
A new episode of Sean Waltman's Pro Wrestling 4 Life drops every Thursday morning on all major podcast platforms and in video form at YouTube.com/XPac!