Christopher Daniels is not ready to go, but he thinks it might be time for him to hang up his boots.
Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian lost their final opportunity to capture the AEW World Tag Team Championship on the Wednesday, May 12 episode of AEW Dynamite.
Now, after losing such a highly competitive match, Christopher Daniels opened the most recent episode of Being The Elite by contemplating if that match was the final match of his career.
He began his monologue by recalling a Dusty Rhodes promo from 1988 where Dusty was contemplating retirement shortly after beating Lex Luger for the NWA United States Championship.
“You know, when I was 18 years old, I watched Dusty Rhodes. One of the guys that grew up watching, I watched him when the US title for the very first time, he beat Lex Luger. I was so happy. I remember the next week, I was watching television, and he was in the locker room sitting at a table with the US championship and he talked. He talked about, after all the time he had spent in wrestling. He was talking about retiring. He was thinking about retiring. I remember thinking in my head, ‘You just won the US Championship. One of the biggest titles in pro wrestling, you be one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling, Lex Luger, and you're thinking of walking away, Dusty!?’ He said I remember it plain as day the way he put it, he said, ‘I'm thinking of laying this old body down.’
I think to myself, at this point in my career, I've been in it longer than he was at that time. I'm older now than he was at that time, and I've done so much less than he ever did and wonder, should I be thinking about laying this body down?”
He continued, ”I mean, there's no shame in losing. You lose a match to someone like The Young Bucks. Of course, that thing happens, they are the best tag team in the world. But maybe the shame is not realizing that that should be your last loss. People have been talking to me and saying, you know, ‘when are you going to decide to hang it up? Chris, when do you decide that you're done?’ Maybe it's not a decision that you make? Maybe it's a realization that it's time. I've got a lot more to say to Frankie [Kazarian] and to my family. But this moment, right now. I don't know what's ahead for me. But I knew at some point, I would walk out a door in an arena and that would be the last time I walk out as a full-time wrestler.
“I don't know if that day is today or not. I don't know. But if it is all I can say is, 'Thanks.' Thank you if you watched, thank you if you cheered, thank you if you booed, just thanks.”
Shortly after that, Daniels would get up and attempt to walk out of the trainer's room before slumping down and holding his head in his hands, beginning to cry, saying, “I don't want to go.”
For the stipulation of the match against Matt and Nick Jackson on Wednesday, May 12, Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels are no longer allowed to be a tag team but Christopher Daniels is not stipulated to retire. Outside the ring, he also has duties as a talent relations executive in AEW.
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