In one of the most memorable moments since NXT moved to USA, Keith Lee sent Adam Cole flying over the guardrail and into the crowd on the Nov. 27 NXT. The GIF instantly became a hit online, with the official WWE account amassing over 4,700 retweets as of this writing.
For Lee, it was the cap on an extraordinary few days that began with a win at NXT TakeOver: WarGames III and featured him being the last remaining superstar on Team NXT at WWE Survivor Series, going head-to-head with Roman Reigns. And while the spot with Cole was memorable, it may not have been the original idea.
"He’s not the guy who should have been involved with that, to be honest. That entire match was … (laugh). There was no opportunity to talk because a person in the match that was supposed to be in the match got injured in Bobby Fish. It shuffled everyone around and then everything was done on the fly," Lee told The New York Post.
Lee was teaming with Dominik Dijakovic against Kyle O'Reilly and Bobby Fish on the episode. Unfortunately, Fish suffered an injury early in the match and had to be replaced by Roderick Strong, who wrestled in his business casual attire.
When asked if he was concerned about how far Cole went, Lee replied, "Yeah, because the first time I saw it, I didn’t even believe it could be real. Like, I did not think that I hit him that hard. It was like a movie scene with wire work and they just yanked him out of the screen or something. He left the frame, man. When I hit him, he almost went over everyone, and that could have been really, really bad. Obviously I want to beat up Adam Cole, but I don’t want to just end him (laugh)."
Sit front row. Get your system SHOCKED.@RealKeithLee @AdamColePro #WWENXT pic.twitter.com/qrYKfJLwMl
— WWE (@WWE) November 28, 2019
Lee would pin Adam Cole on the Dec. 4 NXT and enter #1 Contenders Triple Threat against Finn Balor and Tommaso Ciampa on Dec. 11. Unfortunately for Lee, the triple threat match was won by Balor, who will challenge Cole for the NXT Championship on Wednesday.
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