From 2022 to 2023, Christopher Daniels dealt with an eye injury that was fully red. Daniels said the injury didn't affect his wrestling, but it looked visually painful.
Turns out, the eye injury was never real.
"So, news flash, that was never real," Daniels revealed in an interview with Chris Van Vliet on Insight. "So I had the match with The Young Bucks, all right, and all of you that are watching now, you're gonna feel this. So I had the match with The Young Bucks where SCU split up. I got super kicked into the post, and the next day, I had this huge black eye, and it started to fill with blood. I thought, Man, that's pretty cool. Then three days later, it healed. I was like, Oh, that's too bad, but then I thought, what if? So at the time, Abadon was working for us, and they wear these contacts. And I said, 'Do you have a guy that does these contacts, because I want to do this thing?' They’re like, Yeah. They put me in touch with this guy. I was like, Listen, this is what I want. I just want to make it look like a hemorrhage. I had pitched this idea of I had lost everything. I made this video that I presented to AEW and Tony. And I was like, Hey, here's the story. I was the ring general, but my plans failed, and because of that, SCU is no longer a thing, and now I have this scar to show for my failure. But I'm going to come back, and all I have left is my career and my fighting. So I sent this in, and at the end of that match, I even said to Matt and Nick and Frankie, this might be my last match. I could retire from this. And if I retire because of this, cool.
"So I didn't wrestle for like, three or four months, and then I came up with this idea, gave it to Tony, and then I started doing a little bit of the Indies. I thought, Okay, well, this will get me back on television, but we never really capitalized on that. Then I came back six months later to do the match with Bryan when AEW bought Ring of Honor. That was my first match back from whenever I made the match with The Bucks. So yeah, so that was the mentality of let’s do this thing. So I kept it for a long time, and then later down the line, I was like, Oh, we're not really concentrating on this. This isn't really a thing anymore. So I was like, Yeah, you know what? Maybe it's time for the eye to heal. I wore it for like a year and a half, and I wore it everywhere. The first time I debuted it out in public, I went to the Heels premiere, I met Stephen Amell. He's like, 'Oh my god, your eye.' And I was like, yeah, man, it's okay. And then the next time he saw me was that we were at Grand Slam and Arthur Ashe, and he comes up to me, goes, 'Hey, your eye has healed.' And I was like, 'Hey, that was fake.' He was like, 'You son of a bitch!' I was like, 'Listen, we just watched a television show about a caped man. So what did you want?'"
Asked if he could see through it, Daniels replied, "Oh, yeah, perfectly fine. 100%. The funny thing is, one time I was at a signing, and this lady comes up. She goes, 'Oh, how's your eye?' And I go, 'Well, you know, it's still like this, I don't know.' And she was like, 'Oh, well, that's weird. You know, I'm a doctor.' And I went, Yep, cool. And she's like, 'Yeah, that's not really typical.' And I go, 'No, ma'am, it's not.' Sorry, doctor. I didn't mean to lie to you either."
Daniels did end up retiring in January after a loss to Hangman Page in a Texas Deathmatch.
Elsewhere during the interview, Daniels commented on not being the Higher Power in WWE. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
