Cole Radrick is the Black Label Pro Heavyweight Champion and has wrestled across the country for various independent promotions, including GCW, Freelance, REVOLVER, and more
On September 14, Radrick made his Ring of Honor TV debut, teaming with Matt Brannigan to face Gates Of Agony (Bishop Kaun & Toa Liona).
Though the match lasted less than two minutes, Radrick made the most of his TV time, giving a spin and point as the camera introduced him and playing his role as the overwhelmed babyface against two bigger men.
Speaking to Jeremy Lambert & Joel Pearl on In The Weeds, Radrick reflected on his ROH TV debut.
"It was pretty awesome. There is a weird set of events that led up to it. It was really cool. When I first started wrestling...I'm a realist in some forms. I'm a 5'8'' kind of unathletic white dude from a super small town. To me, making it was just doing something for a major promotion, having a physical match. To do that was checking off one of the biggest goals in wrestling. It's kind of surreal. Did it kind of go the way I wanted it to? No. I still have a mat burn on my forehead from the finish. When we walk out there, I'm trying to keep pace with Matt Brannigan because he has big strong legs. We get in the ring and there are a couple of fans chanting 'Raddy Daddy,' and I thought that was cool. By the end of it, the crowd seemed to be having a good time with me. I got thrown directly onto my face and I don't remember much of that," he said.
When asked if he was given any feedback after the match, Cole said he had to leave quickly because he had a long drive and then a flight to catch.
"Honestly, and this isn't in a negative way about Ring of Honor or the experience, I was so ready to leave. Not because I didn't have a good experience. I had to drive from Indy [Indianapolis] to Cleveland, five and a half hours, and then Cleveland back to Indy to get on a plane to go to New York. My flight left at 6 AM. AEW ended at midnight," he said.
Radrick wrestled the following night at GCW Crushed Up.
Asked if he had a plan to try and stand out when he got booked, Radrick replied, "In wrestling, I've already won. I'm playing with house money. If wrestling ended tomorrow, I did way more than I ever thought I would accomplish. This is what I love doing. I love entertaining a crowd and making sure, by the end of the night, I did something along the lines to entertain them. You may or may not have a short match. You have to find ways to stand out and be entertaining. I don't sit there and be like, 'I'm going to do this spin and look at the camera.' I'm living in the moment and having as much fun as I can with it. A lot of that is my unconfident self from high school trying to be one of the cool kids and awkwardly doing funny quips to make people laugh. That's what it is. Enjoying and living in the moment and having as much fun as I can."
Though the September 14 episode of ROH TV featured the likes of QT Marshall, Claudio Castagnoli, Willow Nightingale, Ethan Page, and more; much of the online chatter was about Radrick's performance in less than two minutes.
"There is part of me where I'm like, 'is that potentially a bad thing that I stuck out that much?' To me, at the end of the night, I was not going to be able to go to the back and say, 'I did not have fun with it. I did not give it my all.' A role is a role, no matter what that role is. No matter whether you're wrestling five minutes, ten minutes, 15 minutes, you still have one job, and that's to entertain the people. If you look at something and look at it negatively, 'Man, I only had this much time, and I didn't get to do this,' the chances of getting a positive result out of that negativity are so little. You have to approach things saying, 'Let's have fun with it.' Pro wrestling is best done that way. It doesn't all have to be super serious," he said.
Bring this man back … IMMEDIATELY !!
— Dorby Allen (@DorbyAllen) September 15, 2023
If you’re gonna waste my time with nonsense squash matches, at least entertain me -- #ROH #AEW pic.twitter.com/y8UejpHJtC
Cole will be in action at BLP Turbo Graps on September 23. He will take on Sonny Kiss in a BLP Heavyweight Title bout.
Check out the full interview with Cole in the video above.
