Shawn Michaels Addresses Recent Stare Down With Adam Cole
Paul "Triple H" Levesque and Shawn Michaels were part of the post-game WWE NXT "Takeover: Stand and Deliver" media call. Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman asked Michaels about his recent stare down with Adam Cole back in March and where it could lead to.
"Well look, I was walking back from the ring, and he just started staring at me," Michaels said. "So I just started staring back. That Adam Cole, if he looks at me wrong, I might have to slap the taste out of his mouth. Na, I'm just kidding. I love Adam Cole! He's one of my boys. Everybody knows some of the similarities between Adam Cole and myself.
"To me, that was just a fun, awesome moment. That was just a moment between Adam Cole and myself. Got to say for me, it was kind of fun, and it got me a little giddy too because that's one of those ones that you wish you were 10 or 15 years younger. That would have been cool at one time."
At night one of Takeover, MSK emerged victorious in the triple threat tag team match for the NXT Tag Team Titles. Triple H and Michaels explained the thought process behind putting the belts on the new up-and-coming tag team.
"If you put GYV and their style, and Legato and their style, and some of the other tag teams that we have and their styles and you take MSK out of the equation, the division feels different," Triple H explained. "MSK came in here, and it was like this firecracker team that was just bright, and speed, and fast and exciting. They just have a different energy. Their energy is palpable, and they bring a different energy.
"So when you put them into the equation, they change the dynamic, and I think very few of the other teams — and that's not a knock. It's a compliment to them but not a knock to anybody else, but the other teams don't necessarily have that. They're definitely there. They definitely bring something to the table, the precision [and] the grit.
"Raul [Mendoza and] Joaquin [Wilde] with the aerial and everything that they do. They're all phenomenal teams. MSK just bring something different in an intangible, and I think that was the deciding factor for us is just they were all of a sudden, this little light that came in, and it just changed the division.
"We don't usually have a lot of missing pieces, but our tag divisions were so complete we needed one last little element to round it out, and I feel like MSK did that," Michaels added. "Now again, it is a complete tag team division that has a number of different, innovative different styles and unique personalities that we didn't have before.
"Styles make fights," Triple H noted. "I've heard that said so many times whether in combat sports or anything else. Styles make fights. They brought a different style that when you match them up against so many other people, you were just like, I got to see that. That's just great. It's a stylistic thing."
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