Why AEW Original Really Hung Up Their Boots

AEW original Christopher Daniels has gone into detail on his decision to retire from the ring.

In the aftermath of a brutal Texas Death Match against Hangman Adam Page at Collision: Maximum Carnage, Christopher Daniels announced that his in-ring career was over on the January 22nd edition of AEW Dynamite. Onscreen, The Fallen Angel said that doctors had told him that his injury history and the damage he recieved from Page meant he should never wrestle again.

Now, appearing on Talk Is Jericho, Daniels has confirmed that his statement on Dynmaite wasn’t far from the reality behind the scenes. The star explained that he has had atrophy in his left arm since his time in WCW, and recently spoke to doctors about getting neck surgery to rectify the problem. An MRI then revealed that Daniels also had extensive bone spurring in his next, and while that was treatable, the surgery woudn’t help the atrophy in his arm.

“So like I said, I had been having atrophy on the left side of my left arm and shoulder from years before, the injury from WCW Nitro. So while this was going on and I was being an EVP, I looked into getting neck surgery to see if there is something I can do to sort of offset this atrophy and stuff. So I spoke to surgeons, and they had said to me we did an MRI, and I’ve got so much spurring on the back of my neck it looks like the skeleton of Alien. There’s all these spurs coming off from the base of my skull to the middle of my back. It’s just this crazy amount of bone spurs coming off my spine.

“So they showed me that at first, the MRI, and I was like oh my, that’s a lot, okay. Then they’re like okay, so we can do this procedure where we basically make the space in your spine where your nerves go to your arms and stuff like that. We can make that bigger so there’s less pressure on the nerves and there’s no impingement, that sort of thing. I was like, that’s great. Then he’s like, but you will never get back what you’ve lost. That atrophy is not gonna go away because this injury, the main injury that started all this is 20 years old. Then I thought, so you mean I can do the surgery and it won’t fix anything? Great, sign me up.

“So that was the end of that thought process of okay, well I can’t get surgery to fix this. There’s no situation where this is going to get better. So I’m like, okay.”

During his final match with Page, Daniels experienced a “tingling” that AEW doctors found disconcerting, leading to him getting more tests.

“Then the match happens with Hangman, I was gonna take this move and I ended up sliding a little bit too far down, I actually bumped my head a little bit and got a little tingly in the arm. Then the finish was meant to be The Buckshot Lariat to the back of the neck. But when it hit, I got a little bit of a jolt again and I was like, ‘Oh.’ I’ve had stingers before, so I didn’t think anything of it. So I go check the docs and they’re like, ‘How do you feel?’ I was like, ‘I feel okay. There’s a little tingle here in this arm.’ They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s disconcerting.’ That made them think maybe we should check this out.

“So I did another little MRI and they’re like, ‘You really, really, should stop doing this.’ I was like, seriously? And they’re like, ‘Well yeah, you’re 54 years old, this isn’t gonna get any better and you could take a bump [and be seriously injured]. First of all, the vertebrae in your neck are starting to fuse, so you’re gonna get less and less flexible, and you’ve taken enough bumps where any sort of whiplash, the danger quotient 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, but near the end, because of the amount of work that I’m doing, and I recognised that the stuff I was doing backstage was a little more important, specifically to the company than my in-ring participation. So having that in mind it’s like, all right, 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? I was like, okay.”

Daniels was aware that Tony Khan hired him more for his wrestling mind than his in-ring work, and decided that his poisiton as VP of Talent Relations was more important than risking his body just to keep getting in the ring.

“So flash forward to today and I was thinking, do I want to keep falling down for a living and possibly damage myself permanently when I don’t need to? And that got me, I was like, yeah, maybe I don’t need to do this anymore. It’d be different if I didn’t have the VP of Talent Relations, the amount of people that I help and work with as a coach back here. That sort of is what Tony hired me for.

“In the end, that’s what I realised. He didn’t really hire me for my in-ring. He hired me for what I could do to help the guys. Whatever he thinks of my wrestling mind, he appreciates it enough where he lets me coach guys like Jay White and Mark Briscoe and The Bucks, Kenny Omega and Hangman Page and all these guys.

“All of these guys that I’ve coached in the past, that sort of is the job that he wants for me. So why am I gonna risk my health and my future, the future of me walking around and being able to play with my potential grandchildren or whatever? It took the ego out of this like, Dude, what are you doing? You don’t need to do this anymore. And I was like, You’re right. I really don’t.”

“I’m A Lot More At Peace With It Than I Thought I Would Be” – Christopher Daniels On AEW In-Ring Retirement

Daniels admitted that he is at peace with his decision to leave the ring behind, something he credits in part to his already reduced schedule in 2024.

“I’m a lot more at peace with it than I thought I would be. I think a lot of that has to do with not wrestling as often as I did in 2024. Like I said, this match that I had with Hangman was the first match that I had in four months. Before that, it was another four months before I had a match. The match that I had before this Hangman match was a match with Jack Perry. And honestly, it wasn’t even supposed to be me. It was just one of those things where Tony had Jack Perry versus TBD, and I was like what if that’s me? Because I had this thing with The Elite.

“At that moment too, the last match that I had had was on the independents, and in the back of my head I always said, well out of respect to Tony, I should probably have my last match in AEW. I didn’t want to not have a match in AEW and if the end were to come soon, I didn’t want to be like, oh sh*t, I never had that match with AEW.

“So I literally volunteered, ‘Hey, man, I could wrestle that match.’ Then I wrestled that match with Jack, and I even said to him at that moment ‘Hey, man, I’m not sure, this might be my last match.’ He was like what? I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m getting to the end, and there’s not a lot of demand for me. But I mean, we’ll see what happens.’ Just sort of in passing, and it almost happened that way, that almost was my last match until this thing with Hangman went down.”

Since his retirment, Christopher Daniels’ former SCU teammate Frankie Kazarian has praised The Fallen Angel, saying his contributions to pro wrestling “will never be realized.”

H/T to ITR Wrestling for the above transcription.