Posted on 7/03/125 by Colin Vassallo
Christopher Daniels sat down with Chris Van Vliet at West
Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his
retirement match against “Hangman” Adam Page, the terrifying
spot during TNA Ultimate X where he almost died, competing
in the Unbreakable 2005 triple threat match against Samoa
Joe and AJ Styles, the rumor that he was going to be The
Higher Power in WWE, the inspiration for the Best Moonsault
Ever and his thoughts on Tiffany Stratton’s version, the
origin of Curry Man, the true story behind his gruesome eye
injury in AEW and more!
On the terrifying fall with Suicide during Ultimate X:
“I was holding on so tight to Suicide that he ended up
taking the brunt of the fall. And the funny thing is, that
wasn’t the original plan. Because Frankie and I, who was
doing Suicide, we had an idea of what we wanted to do, and
I’ll tell you the story. So we had both jumped off the top
of the trust before in these Ultimate X matches, we were the
only ones. So I had an idea, ‘What if we did this? I’ll get
on this truss, and you get on this truss, and you jump
first, and then I’ll jump and I’ll land on your back, and
then we’ll stand on the ropes, and I’ll hook you for Angel’s
Wings, and then you backdrop me.’ That was what we were
going to do. I was full on ready to take this backdrop from
the top of the truss into the ring. Then we get to Irvine,
and they’ve got a ceiling on it. They’ve got these trusses
over the top that cover the X, and we couldn’t do that
because every time we had done Ultimate X in Orlando, they
had bolted the trusses to the floor. But we didn’t own
Irvine. This was UC Irvine. So we had to have the truss on
top. We couldn’t bolt it to the floor. We couldn’t use it to
secure the trusses. So we had to have the X over top. So
then we came up with this idea of all right, well, I guess
we’ll climb down and I’ll try and do this complete shot to
you, and it turned so my legs got hooked. And instead of
just going flat on a flat back, which still would have been
an insane bump, it ended up being like almost upside down
and landing like this [on my head].”
“Joe really yelled at me that day. The actual danger was
coming to the back and having Samoa Joe grab you by the neck
and go, ‘Don’t you ever do that again!’ Really, really
frightening. I was fine. I literally landed, and the referee
comes over to my face. He goes, ‘Oh my god, are you okay?’
I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m good. What’s up?’ But I could hear that
the air escape the room. In the end, I wish we hadn’t done
that, because it literally the match just stopped right
there. Poor [Amazing] Red is still fighting and trying to
get the X Division belt, and the world thinks, Oh, my God,
we just witnessed a death. They’re not even thinking about
the match anymore at that point. So I feel bad that it ended
up being what it was. But I mean, that’s the thing everybody
remembers, is my near-death experience. Well, that’s not
really what we wanted to get. I tell people all the time,
‘Chris Daniels almost dies’ is on YouTube.”
On the rumor he was going to be the higher power in WWE:
“I didn’t hear this until years later. [So is there any
truth to it?] Maybe, but it was never anything that they
told me, and honestly, it was a terrible idea anyway.
Because the idea would have been Undertaker is answering to
this higher power, and then I unmask, and it’s me, and it’s
like, Who the f*ck is this guy? It’s sort of like what was
going on in my first WCW contract as well. When I first
signed with WCW, they had an idea. The way they described it
to me was, if Vampiro is Darth Vader, you’re the Emperor.
And I was like, Okay. But also, at this point, Vampiro was
feuding with Sting, and I was an unknown indie guy, so
whatever the reveal was gonna be at that point was gonna be
a letdown to me. And so I thought, Okay, we’ll do this. I
remember going to WCW one day, cutting this promo backstage
with Vampiro. I’ve got this hood, and they’re talking to me,
like, ‘All right, talk about harvesting souls and things
like that.’ I’m like, okay. So I cut this promo. We get it
live, and then I’m back in the locker room, it comes on live
Nitro, and we watch it. And as soon as it’s done, Jeff
Jarrett, who happens to be there, and I haven’t really even
met Jeff at this point, he goes, ‘Who the f*ck was that?!’
And I was like, ‘That’s me sir.’ Then that flopped so
quickly that they didn’t go forward with that idea. Then I
was just under contract with WCW. I was traveling with them
for like four months, and then they let me go. That was the
first contract that I had with them that ended like. JJ
Dillon called me, is like, ‘Hey, you’re not wrestling a
whole lot for us.’ And I was like, ‘Well, you’re not booking
me, so that’s why. It’s not like I’m wasting your money on
purpose, sir.’ But they let me go.”
On how he found out about the rumor:
“It came out on the internet. I think maybe Bruce Prichard
mentioned it? But yeah, everyone was like, ‘Christopher
Daniels was almost the higher power.’ I was like, was he
though? I don’t think that’s true. I think maybe it was
discussed because I had been going to do WWE dark matches as
an extra, and Jim Cornette was always sort of high on trying
to get me there early on when the light heavyweight thing
was a thing, and they knew I was doing The Fallen Angel. So
I think they thought, Oh, well, maybe this is something that
we could use him as. But honestly, I think once Vince saw
me, and, you know, I’m 5’10 and this is the time when
everybody is six feet something, it’s like, we can do
better. And I was like, that makes sense.”
On the origin of the BME:
“Okay, so I was always a moonsault guy. I always wanted to
do a moonsault. The Great Muta inspired me to do a
moonsault. And so I started to learn a moonsault, like early
94, 95. I remember doing it for the first time in Puerto
Rico when I was in WWC. So I was training one day in windy
city, and there was a Mexican wrestler that was there, it
wasn’t anybody famous, I don’t even remember the gentleman’s
name, but I saw him bounce from the second [rope], bounce to
the top, do a cross body, and I thought, Oh, that’s cool. At
the time, I was playing with this moonsault where you stand
on the top rope and then you jump up and bounce. You
basically turn and bounce like Mark Mero had done. So I was
doing that for a little bit and having sort of good success
with it. But then I thought, Oh, maybe it’d be easier if I
just did this bounce-bounce thing. So for the longest time,
I just called it the double bounce moonsault. I wasn’t doing
it on television at that point, so no one was calling it the
double bounce moonsault, no announcers were calling it. It
was just me when I would say, Hey, okay, this, this, this,
and then I’ll hit you with the double bounce moonsault. So
somewhere along the lines in TNA, you know, I’m a Simpsons
fan. So everything that Comic Book Guy said was like, ‘best
comic book ever.’ And I thought, haha! So I was like ‘best
moonsault ever.’ So that was where I got that from.”
On Tiffany Stratton having the prettiest moonsault ever:
“Which was very, very cool of her. I don’t know Tiffany at
all. I’ve never met her. But the fact that she didn’t just
copy it, she sort of adjusted it, which is what the greats
do. I feel like they don’t just steal. If we are inspired by
something, we try to put our own little spin on it. So the
fact that she goes from the bottom all the way up and then
to sort of like, pay homage, call it in that same vein, PME,
I was like, that’s pretty cool. I can’t be mad at that. That
was very cool, I appreciate it, thanks Tiffany.”