Ring of Honor World Champion Christopher Daniels recently spoke with Justin Barrasso for Sports Illustrated Extra Mustard‘s Week In Wrestling. You can read a few excerpts below:
Christopher Daniels reflects on being ‘the guy who never won the big one’ now that he did win the Ring of Honor World Championship:
“I’m happy to shed the title of ‘The Best Who Never Held It’. The way I’m perceived now is forever changed. I’d resigned myself to the idea that I might not get it, and I said I’d be OK with that. Success is gauged by my ability to feed my family and provide, but just to have this title in my hands, I realized I would have been lying to myself—I wouldn’t have been OK if I didn’t win it.”
Daniels says his huge win kept him up that night:
“I went to bed at one in the morning and woke up at three. I just sat in bed and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I ended up going downstairs in the hotel and finding a blackjack table with our referee, Todd Sinclair, who at that point was up $5,000. I played an hour of blackjack, broke dead even, but I still couldn’t go back to sleep.”
Daniels comments on catching people off guard with his plan with Kazarian:
“I feel real fortunate that we came up with the game plan. It’s hard, in 2017, to catch folks unaware. I feel like we did a really good job of it, and I credit that to all the guys involved and the crew behind the scenes laying stuff out in a manner that was creative and keeping the twists and turns under the hat until the right time.”