10 Best Wrestlers Of 2019
3. Adam Cole
Adam Cole is a modern-age Edge - a performer who recognises his light frame and bases a credible and absorbing in-ring style around it - and that style meshes perfectly with the broader NXT style and its triumphs of physical conditioning and melodrama.
Cole is a tremendous counter technician who uses his style to inform his character as a slippery, desperate escapologist dependent on his brothers to retain the NXT Championship he carried with such star power throughout 2019. He claimed it, in an all-time great series with Johnny Gargano, in matches that made seminal use of his incredible body language and facials, but he didn't need to rely on epics to enter the elite class. His thrilling (and different) sprints with Jordan Myles and Matt Riddle de-emphasised the acting elements and put over his credentials as a next-level athlete and technician. Cole is such a tremendous storyteller that he created a minor classic with Pete Dunne at Survivor Series in defiance of a reluctant crowd and a cop-out double injury storyline.
His Panama Sunrise works as an act of deception because it's perfectly within a character you can very much see why WWE has marked as the future face of the company.