Ring of Honor Champ Christopher Daniels on Winning His First-Ever Singles Title at 47
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big pro wrestling pay-per-view this weekend in Florida. Oh, no, not that one — Ring of Honor’s Supercard of Honor XI is set for Saturday in Lakeland.
OK, so ROH is no WWE, and “Supercard XI” is won’t be WrestleMania 33 — but the growing and highly respected promotion aims to put on a hell of a show. Despite getting the jump by a day on Super Bowl of pro wrestling WrestleMania, Ring of Honor will be going up directly against Vince McMahon’s minor league program, NXT, which has its regular “Takeover” event Saturday night.
Even with the stiff competition, ROH’s version of WrestleMania will be best-attended company event under Sinclair Broadcast group’s ownership, which happened back in May 2011. That basically means it will beat out the promotion’s prior PPV event, when 47-year-old Christopher Daniels finally won his first-ever singles World Championship.
Hey, better late than never, right? Just ask Daniels himself. Or rather, don’t bother, because we did.
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“Honestly, I’m happy that it happened at all,” Daniels, who will defend his title against Dalton Castle, told TheWrap. “I sort of resigned myself after 23 years in that I wasn’t gonna get this opportunity to be the World Champion, and now here I am.”
The man behind Curry Man’s mask is still (rightfully) jazzed about the unexpected feat, especially coming this late in his career.
“It was f—ing awesome. I won’t lie,” Daniels answered when we asked how f—ing awesome that moment was. “It certainly something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
“And being able to watch it unfold after the fact — watching tape of it — it still gets me,” he continued. “I still get those butterflies in my stomach when I see the ref count ‘3’ and raise my hand, and I see the streamers come into the ring, and watching the guys come into the ring and celebrate with me.”
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That was a particularly touching moment, even for the most cynical of squared-circle fans. We’re about to make it even more meaningful for you guys.
“It wasn’t a planned thing,” Daniels told us of the group celebration. “It’s pretty cool to get the respect of your peers enough to where they feel compelled to come and do something like that on their own — not prompted by the office or ‘Hey, let’s make this look like a real thing!'”
Relive Daniels moonsaulting his way to the title via the video above, and catch him defending the belt in the co-main event of Saturday’s Supercard of Honor XI.
Fans can watch the whole thing unfold beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET on FITE TV.
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