Christopher Daniels Says Match With Stephen Amell At All In Was Cody Rhodes’ Idea

Christopher Daniels battled Stephen Amell at All In in 2018, and he recently looked back on the match and how it came about. Daniels and Amell competed at the 2018 show, the success of which famously led to the creation of AEW in 2019.

Daniels recently reflected on the match during an appearance on Highspots’ Virtual Gimmick Table. He recalled that the match was Cody Rhodes’ idea and praised the match as one of the most memorable of his career. You can see highlights below, per Fightful:

On How the Match Came About:

“I actually got an opportunity to wrestle him when Cody was World Champion in Ring of Honor. We did a five-on-four tag match in San Antonio and that is where I first met Stephen, and then after working with him that night, I believe that was where the discussion came around… It was Cody’s idea for me to wrestle Stephen for this potential show that came up.”

On Wrestling Amell:

“I was very fortunate in the sense that Stephen had two things going for him. He was very athletic, he did a lot of his own stuff on the Arrow television show. Obviously, he was in great shape. But he also was a fan and I think when you’re a fan growing up, you have that preconceived notion of what wrestling is… If I said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do a bodyslam, we’re gonna do a suplex.’ He understood what those meant. I didn’t have to explain to him from the ground up what wrestling was. He had a frame of reference for everything that we were talking about.

“So that really went a long way to making that match as good as it was and I always give credit when credit is due and Stephen Amell had 300 jobs depending on him being at television, however often he was shooting Arrow, and he came and risked that all just to wrestle me. He gave his all to it and he really worked hard and it’s one of the most memorable matches of my career to be honest.”