Christopher Daniels Explains His Decision To Retire From the Ring

In an interview with Talk is Jericho (via Fightful), Christopher Daniels explained his decision to retire from the ring, as he wrestled his final match earlier this month. Daniels faced Hangman Page in a Texas Death Match on AEW Collision, which he lost. Here are highlights:

On why he decided to retire: “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.”

On getting booked less in AEW 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?’”

On the damage to his body: “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.”

On dangerous moments in his match with Hangman Page: “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.”