During a recent appearance on Chris Van Vliet’s “Insight” podcast, AEW star Christopher Daniels commented on never appearing in WWE, AEW establishing its identity, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On not ever signing with WWE: “They weren’t buying what I was selling, and I get that. You look at the way the light heavyweight division was emphasized or how little it was emphasized at the time. You know, it’s all about timing. Like when I was available and ready to go, there wasn’t really a space for guys like me. They were struggling with just to have Taka and like, and Águila. And some of the other guys that were smaller stature. Those guys would, every once and a while, be on television. So they weren’t like, added to that.
“Then all of a sudden in 2010, all of a sudden they were like, ‘hey, let’s get smaller guys and give those opportunities.’ By that time I was sort of either filmy entrenched with either TNA or Ring of Honor. So, there wasn’t really a moment where I was free and clear.”
On AEW’s identity: “I feel like it’s going well in the sense that we’ve grown and we’ve established an identity. You know, for the first year, I feel like we were a well-kept secret that all of a sudden getting spread around. And then it was like, ‘oh, a lot more people know about this than I thought.’ You know, in that first year, we’re filling arenas right before the pandemic hit. We were having sold-out shows and big arenas and big shows.
“You know the Pay-Per-View directly before the lockdown hit, Revolution, the night that Moxley won the belt. It was a sold-out show in Chicago. And you’re like, ‘things are going great!’ Now that we’re on the other side of the pandemic and going back to the arenas and we’re still selling well. We’ve also added so many different people that the landscape like I said, has changed in AEW.”
On the roster talent in AEW: “I feel like there’s such a wide variety of guys now. At any moment we can throw anybody out there and give you just an amazing wrestling match. It’s amazing to think, like three years ago like, ‘oh, Bryan Danielson’s gonna be there or oh, CM Punk come back.’ We had no idea, we had no idea that this would be a thing.
“So I mean, here we are man. We’ve made so much noise that CM Punk turned around and said, ‘oh, hey, maybe this is a place to come back to.’ Or Bryan Danielson said, ‘you know what WWE, I’m good. I’m going to go over here.’”
