Christopher Daniels Discusses Ultimate X Bump, WWE ‘Higher Power’ Rumor, and Origin of the BME – AEW’s Head of Talent Relations and in-ring veteran Christopher Daniels recently sat down with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, where he reflected on key moments from his storied career, including one of the most terrifying spots in TNA history, his brush with WWE creative plans, and the origin of his signature move—the Best Moonsault Ever (BME).
On the terrifying fall with Suicide during Ultimate X:
“I was holding on so tight to Suicide that he ended up taking the brunt of the fall. And the funny thing is, that wasn’t the original plan. Because Frankie and I, who was doing Suicide, we had an idea of what we wanted to do, and I’ll tell you the story. So we had both jumped off the top of the trust before in these Ultimate X matches, we were the only ones. So I had an idea, ‘What if we did this? I’ll get on this truss, and you get on this truss, and you jump first, and then I’ll jump and I’ll land on your back, and then we’ll stand on the ropes, and I’ll hook you for Angel’s Wings, and then you backdrop me.’ That was what we were going to do. I was full on ready to take this backdrop from the top of the truss into the ring. Then we get to Irvine, and they’ve got a ceiling on it. They’ve got these trusses over the top that cover the X, and we couldn’t do that because every time we had done Ultimate X in Orlando, they had bolted the trusses to the floor. But we didn’t own Irvine. This was UC Irvine. So we had to have the truss on top. We couldn’t bolt it to the floor. We couldn’t use it to secure the trusses. So we had to have the X over top. So then we came up with this idea of all right, well, I guess we’ll climb down and I’ll try and do this complete shot to you, and it turned so my legs got hooked. And instead of just going flat on a flat back, which still would have been an insane bump, it ended up being like almost upside down and landing like this [on my head].”
“Joe really yelled at me that day. The actual danger was coming to the back and having Samoa Joe grab you by the neck and go, ‘Don’t you ever do that again!’ Really, really frightening. I was fine. I literally landed, and the referee comes over to my face. He goes, ‘Oh my god, are you okay?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m good. What’s up?’ But I could hear that the air escape the room. In the end, I wish we hadn’t done that, because it literally the match just stopped right there. Poor [Amazing] Red is still fighting and trying to get the X Division belt, and the world thinks, Oh, my God, we just witnessed a death. They’re not even thinking about the match anymore at that point. So I feel bad that it ended up being what it was. But I mean, that’s the thing everybody remembers, is my near-death experience. Well, that’s not really what we wanted to get. I tell people all the time, ‘Chris Daniels almost dies’ is on YouTube.”
On the rumor he was going to be the higher power in WWE:
“I didn’t hear this until years later. [So is there any truth to it?] Maybe, but it was never anything that they told me, and honestly, it was a terrible idea anyway. Because the idea would have been Undertaker is answering to this higher power, and then I unmask, and it’s me, and it’s like, Who the f*ck is this guy? It’s sort of like what was going on in my first WCW contract as well. When I first signed with WCW, they had an idea. The way they described it to me was, if Vampiro is Darth Vader, you’re the Emperor. And I was like, Okay. But also, at this point, Vampiro was feuding with Sting, and I was an unknown indie guy, so whatever the reveal was gonna be at that point was gonna be a letdown to me. And so I thought, Okay, we’ll do this. I remember going to WCW one day, cutting this promo backstage with Vampiro. I’ve got this hood, and they’re talking to me, like, ‘All right, talk about harvesting souls and things like that.’ I’m like, okay. So I cut this promo. We get it live, and then I’m back in the locker room, it comes on live Nitro, and we watch it. And as soon as it’s done, Jeff Jarrett, who happens to be there, and I haven’t really even met Jeff at this point, he goes, ‘Who the f*ck was that?!’ And I was like, ‘That’s me sir.’ Then that flopped so quickly that they didn’t go forward with that idea. Then I was just under contract with WCW. I was traveling with them for like four months, and then they let me go. That was the first contract that I had with them that ended like. JJ Dillon called me, is like, ‘Hey, you’re not wrestling a whole lot for us.’ And I was like, ‘Well, you’re not booking me, so that’s why. It’s not like I’m wasting your money on purpose, sir.’ But they let me go.”
On how he found out about the rumor:
“It came out on the internet. I think maybe Bruce Prichard mentioned it? But yeah, everyone was like, ‘Christopher Daniels was almost the higher power.’ I was like, was he though? I don’t think that’s true. I think maybe it was discussed because I had been going to do WWE dark matches as an extra, and Jim Cornette was always sort of high on trying to get me there early on when the light heavyweight thing was a thing, and they knew I was doing The Fallen Angel. So I think they thought, Oh, well, maybe this is something that we could use him as. But honestly, I think once Vince saw me, and, you know, I’m 5’10 and this is the time when everybody is six feet something, it’s like, we can do better. And I was like, that makes sense.”
On the origin of the BME:
“Okay, so I was always a moonsault guy. I always wanted to do a moonsault. The Great Muta inspired me to do a moonsault. And so I started to learn a moonsault, like early 94, 95. I remember doing it for the first time in Puerto Rico when I was in WWC. So I was training one day in windy city, and there was a Mexican wrestler that was there, it wasn’t anybody famous, I don’t even remember the gentleman’s name, but I saw him bounce from the second [rope], bounce to the top, do a cross body, and I thought, Oh, that’s cool. At the time, I was playing with this moonsault where you stand on the top rope and then you jump up and bounce. You basically turn and bounce like Mark Mero had done. So I was doing that for a little bit and having sort of good success with it. But then I thought, Oh, maybe it’d be easier if I just did this bounce-bounce thing. So for the longest time, I just called it the double bounce moonsault. I wasn’t doing it on television at that point, so no one was calling it the double bounce moonsault, no announcers were calling it. It was just me when I would say, Hey, okay, this, this, this, and then I’ll hit you with the double bounce moonsault. So somewhere along the lines in TNA, you know, I’m a Simpsons fan. So everything that Comic Book Guy said was like, ‘best comic book ever.’ And I thought, haha! So I was like ‘best moonsault ever.’ So that was where I got that from.”
On Tiffany Stratton having the prettiest moonsault ever:
“Which was very, very cool of her. I don’t know Tiffany at all. I’ve never met her. But the fact that she didn’t just copy it, she sort of adjusted it, which is what the greats do. I feel like they don’t just steal. If we are inspired by something, we try to put our own little spin on it. So the fact that she goes from the bottom all the way up and then to sort of like, pay homage, call it in that same vein, PME, I was like, that’s pretty cool. I can’t be mad at that. That was very cool, I appreciate it, thanks Tiffany.”
Christopher Daniels Discusses Ultimate X Bump, WWE ‘Higher Power’ Rumor, and Origin of the BME
