When Adam Cole enters the ring, fans are ready to welcome him with his customary "BAY BAY!" chant after he yells his name.
Speaking to The SunSport, Adam Cole revealed Chris Jericho and Joey Mercury were the two men who inspired the chant.
“I still am a massive Chris Jericho fan and when he was in WCW shouting ‘come on baby’, I thought it was so obnoxious," said Cole. "The actual idea of yelling my name and putting ‘bay bay’ at the end was I saw Joey Mercury. He was wrestling the Independents as Joey Matthews, at a Maryland Championship Wrestling show and he was beating a guy up. Throughout the whole match he would throw his fists up in the air and shout ‘Joey Matthews’, over and over again to the point where people hated it so much. I thought that was so brilliant. For anyone who had never been to a wrestling show before, they were going to leave there remembering his name. So for the first six years that I did it, people would boo or just not respond at all. It was not something that people did with me, at all."
While the chant wasn't an immediate hit, it eventually caught on. And when Cole made his NXT debut at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn III, the Brooklyn crowd gleefully yelled at "BAY BAY!" as Cole stood at the top of the ramp.
“Even when the three of us debuted at TakeOver for NXT (before Roderick Strong joined), I remember us walking up the ramp, having never been in NXT before. I could tell they were excited and I thought ‘screw it, I am going to do ‘Adam Cole Bay Bay’ to see how it goes and everyone did it. I was like ‘oh, great I can do it here too.'"
Along with the crowd yelling "BAY BAY!" once he gets into the ring, they've also taken to yelling "BOOM!" as Cole stands on the apron to coincide with the lyric in his theme music.
Cole is set to defend his NXT Championship against Tommaso Ciampa at NXT TakeOver: Portland on Saturday, Feb. 16.
