Christopher Daniels explains his retirement.
The first month of 2025 featured a shocking retirement in the world of wrestling, as Christopher Daniels retired from the sport after his Texas Deathmatch with 'Hangman' Adam Page.
Many fans were confused by the sudden nature of this decision, with some even noting that Daniels deserved a bigger send-off.
On the latest edition of Talk Is Jericho, Christopher Daniels explained and laid out a ton of information surrounding his retirement, first taking listeners all the way back to 2023 when his body started breaking down.
“As far as the match goes, I’m very proud of how the match went. Knowing that was my first match in four months at that point, it was something. How we all sort of came of that, so in 2023, I was wrestling a lot. Tony, not specifically in storyline stuff, but the way Tony thinks sometimes is he’s got the stuff that he has and he’s like, ‘Alright, I’d like to feature this person. CD, would you mind wrestling this guy?’ It’s like, okay okay. At the end of 2023, I thought to myself, okay, you know what? I’m getting along in the tooth. Honestly, my body was sort of breaking down. I’ve had knee problems for a while, but through 2023, I started to have hip issues, my right hip was tightening up and it was sort of difficult to be flexible. I didn’t feel very athletic anymore.
Daniels continued on and recalled an injury that he suffered in 2001, saying that it caught up to him at the end of 2023. Daniels also talked about how Tony Khan started to book him less as time went on.
"In 2001 when I had the accident on WCW Nitro when I landed on my head, initially when that had happened, my arm went numb and it was numb for like six weeks. My tricep, I lost all feeling, I couldn’t raise my arm above my shoulder. Since that period of time, my left arm had always been my weaker arm, it would get tired quicker. Near the end of 2023, I started to notice atrophy in my actual left bicep and my left shoulder. I thought, oh, that’s not good. As that was happening, I decided at the end of 2023 I was like, you know what? I’m going to make an effort to make — this could be my last year — I’m going to make an effort. I started training with Cezar Bononi because he had done such great work with guys like Ethan Page and Eddie Kingston. I worked with him for a period of time thinking, okay, I’m gonna do my best to make — if this could be my last run, I’m gonna make something out of it. I went and got new gear, started working with Cezar. Right around that period of time, this was the beginning of 2024, right around that time, all of the sudden, there wasn’t as much where Tony was booking me. It was less and less frequent through the very first half of 2024. You know, a lot of that has to due with the fact that we have limited television time. I was doing some ROH, but for whatever reason, there were less opportunities where it was like, ‘Hey CD, can you wrestle this person?’"
Then, Daniels talked about his stint as an authority figure in 2024 and how he was an easy antagonist for the Young Bucks. Daniels noted that this run lessened his time in the ring even more.
"When the Young Bucks came back as the Matthew and Nicholas EVPs, Tony was starting to send me out as I guess a representative of the backstage guys. Very much GM style, I’d come out in my dress clothes and break up fights and try to be the voice of reason. When that thing happened with Matt and Nick and they started this angle, I was an easy antagonist for them because to Tony I was — he always called me an ROH luminary because he never wanted me to be a bad guy, even when I pitched it. ‘Hey, can I be a bad guy?’ ‘No, I think you’re an ROH luminary, you’re a good guy.’ When that happened, there was an opportunity for me to wrestle the Young Bucks with a partner that ended up being Matt [Sydal]. When that happened, I said, ‘If they beat me in this match, wouldn’t they fire me for being an insolent employee?’ We sort of jumped on that boat of, oh yeah, Matt and Nick wrestle me and Matt, they beat me, hey CD you’re fired. So, in my head I thought, okay, at some point, Tony’s going to rehire me, it’ll be like the EVPs trying to battle Tony’s power, that’s the story. Instead, they went with an idea of — this is when Kenny was going through his health issues — we had suggested, what if CD became an interim EVP and took the place of Kenny who obviously wasn’t able to come out and make proclamations. That turned into me basically being the GM character. In my head when that came around I was like, oh, all the EVPs wrestle, so I’ll still wrestle occasionally. That wasn’t the case. I think part of that was like, oh, we can’t have you wrestling matches, it’s sort of a conflict of interest. It lessened the amount of time I was in the wrestling ring.”
'The Fallen Angel' then chatted about how he ended up in a story with Adam Page and how he planned to just move on to the next story after that one was wrapped up.
“Yeah, I thought, how do I get back into this? Near the end, Tony was like, Kenny’s coming back, Kenny’s coming back so we’re gonna give him back the EVP position. I went, okay, that’s an opportunity for me to get back into the ring. What if I started doing this story with Hangman, what if I started this thing with him and that could be the springboard to me returning to the ring. In my EVP position, I came to try and stop Hangman after he was attacking guys after the matches. He was attacking Jay White I believe, lighting houses on fire. My mentality was, hey, you’re my friend from before AEW. There’s no one here for you right now. The bucks are gone, Kenny is gone, you stand alone. I can be your friend. I sort of told that story too like, at this point, Scorpio and Frankie aren’t here. Matt Sydal is injured and out. I’m alone. What if we did this story where I’m trying to help him out? My idea was going to be get to the point where I wrestle this match with Hangman and when that story is over, just do what comes next, whatever kind of young guy would come forward and I’d wrestle next."
Daniels shifted to the bad part of his story, noting that doctors found a ton of bone spurs on his neck during a MRI. Knowing that it wouldn't fix anything, Daniels opted to not have surgery to help with his atrophy.
"That ended up not really working out because of the way the match went. Like I said, I had been having atrophy on my left arm and shoulder from years before. While this was going on and being an EVP, I looked into getting neck surgery to see, is there something I can do to offset this atrophy and stuff. I spoke to surgeons and they had to said to me, ‘Oh, you know what, we did an MRI.’ I’ve got so much spurring on the back of my neck it looks like the skeleton of [a xenomorph] from Alien. There’s all these spurs coming from the base of my skull to the middle of my back, it’s this crazy amount of bone spurs. They showed me that first, the MRI, and I was like, woah. They were like, okay, so we can do this procedure where we basically make the space in your spine where the nerves go to your arms, we can make that bigger so there’s less pressure on the nerves. I was like, that’s great. He was like, but, you will never get back what you’ve lost, you’re never gonna get back — that atrophy is not going to go away. The main injury that started this is 20 years old. I thought, oh, so I can do the surgery and it won’t fix anything? Great, sign me up! That was the end of that thought process like, I can’t get surgery to fix this, there’s no situation where it’s gonna get better.”
Daniels continued on and recalled two dangerous moments in his match with Adam Page. After the bout, Daniels noted that doctors advised him to stop wrestling after he did another MRI. This allowed him to take a step back and evaluate the situation.
“The match happens with Hangman. I was gonna take this move and I ended up sliding a little bit too far down and I actually bumped my head a little bit and got a little tingley in the arm. The finish was meant to the Buckshot Lariat to the back of the neck but when it hit, I got a little bit of a jolt again. I’ve had stingers before, I didn’t think anything of it. I go check with the docs and they’re like, how do you feel? I feel okay, there’s a little tingling here in this arm. I did another MRI and they’re like, you really should stop doing this. I was like, seriously? They’re like, well, you’re 54 years old, this isn’t going to get any better. The vertebrae in your neck are starting to fuse, so you’re going to get less and less flexible. You’ve taken enough bumps to where any sort of whiplash, the danger sort of rises and rises. So, I sort of had to take a look at that and go, what am I really doing this for? I grew up loving wrestling. Near the end, because of the amount of work I’m doing — I recognize that the stuff I was doing backstage was a little bit more important specifically to the company than my in-ring participation. Having that in mind, it’s like, why are you stressing yourself out about trying to get in the ring again when you’ve got a job that you have to do, that the company sort of depends on you to do.”
Daniels finished off the topic by expressing his gratitude towards AEW and Tony Khan, stating that the backstage portion of his job allows him to stay finanically stable even with his in-ring retirement.
“Around 2019, right before the company became the television entity that it is, I remember I was sitting at home and reading, it was something where Roddy Piper was pissed because he had to go back to wrestling at 49 years old because he was basically broke. I thought to myself, oh shit, I’m almost 50 years old and I am very fortunate to have the position that I have with AEW. I remember calling Tony like, listen man, I just read this thing about Roddy Piper and how he was this age and I’m this age and I’m somewhat comfortable because of you and I wanted to say thank you. I was in tears. Because of AEW, I’m somewhat financially stable, my family is taken care of, and that was the important thing. Fast forward to today and I’m thinking, do I want to keep falling down for a living and possibly damaging myself permanently when I don’t need to? That got me, I was like, maybe I don’t need to do this anymore. I’d be different if I didn’t have the VP of talent relations title, the amount of people I help and work with as a coach back here — that sort of is what Tony hired for me. In the end, I realized, he didn’t really hire me for my in-ring. He hired for me for what I can do to help the guys and whatever he thinks of my wrestling mind, he appreciates it enough to where he lets me coach guys — all these guys I’ve coached in the past, that’s sort of is the job that he wanted for me, so why am I going to risk my health and the future of me walking around and being able to play with my potential grandchildren or whatever. I was like, dude, what are you doing, you don’t need to do this anymore.”
Throughout his celebrated 30+ year in-ring career, Daniels competed in nearly 2,000 matches across promotions like TNA Wrestling, Ring Of Honor, AEW, PWG, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and WWE/WWF.
Check out the current lineup for the January 29 edition of AEW Dynamite by clicking here.
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