Interview: Ring Of Honor's Christopher Daniels Talks Comics, Ladder Matches, And The Future

You probably know Christopher Daniels as a world-class professional wrestler, but you might know just how much he enjoys the world of comics.

Daniels will be in action tonight at Supercard of Honor in a Six Man Tag Team Championship Ladder Match, but before he jumps into the ring he took some time out to talk to ComicBook.com about his career, what's in front of him, and his love of all things Marvel.

Speaking of Marvel, we asked Daniels which Marvel character he would love to write, and it turns out he's got a special appreciation of everyone's favorite badass Logan.

"To me, I think the obvious answer for me would be Wolverine, just because he's been the character that I enjoyed the most," Daniels said. "He's the character that got me sort of into it, the stuff that Byrne and Claremont did with him in Uncanny back in the day. That stuff and then Claremont and Miller's first miniseries. Those are the things that I enjoyed enough as a fan where I sort of was endeared by this character throughout. So I don't know what I would do to switch it up, though, man. I think that's why I'm not writing comic books is that I'm not struck with the inspiration like guys like Charles Soule is doing now, and with the new stuff coming up with The Hunt for Wolverine and things like that. All that stuff is really interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does."

Now Logan has himself an Infinity Stone, which presents some amazing possibilities.

Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've dug what Gerry Duggan has done, and that miniseries so far as well," Daniels said. "The Infinity Prime, the first issue of that little series, the little interaction between him and Loki at the very beginning was incredible. And Mike Deodato as the artist was just the perfect artist to put that little interaction together. I thought it was great."

While they don't include Wolverine, Daniels has actually had the chance to create comics as well alongside Frankie Kazarian, Art Baltazar, and Franco for Aw Yeah Comics, and a new entry is on its way.

"I actually, the next chapter in the "Aw Yeah" saga for me, I've written, the third part of this little trilogy's already been written, and a couple months after I wrote that I wrote a little backup story starring the Young Bucks and us, so that's all in the works to get made as soon as Art Balthazar, who's one of the busiest men in comic books, when he gets a second to be able to draw that stuff."

Daniels has another idea though that could involve the rest of Ring of Honor.

"I had an idea to do sort of a Contest of Champions-style miniseries with me and Frankie and the Young Bucks, and maybe add a couple different guys from the Ring of Honor locker room," Daniels said. "I felt like I was inspired on a flight home to write the little backup story starring the Young Bucks and literally I started as we took off and finished as we were landing. So, to me, I'm sure the guys go through it all the time, the writers, the guys that do four months with books up a month for three years at a time."

"Someone like Dan Slott has been writing Spiderman for 10 years, probably is going to put 10 years into Iron Man and 10 years into Fantastic Four coming up," Daniels said. "They get that inspiration all the time or at least they're working hard to sort of have the gears turning. I get these once in a while strokes of genius and I feel like I put them down. I mean, if I could get struck with a couple more of those, I'd love to write more stuff, but that's sort of the next step for me. The idea of doing the wrestling stars of ROH in the "Aw Yeah" universe doing something cosmic and grand and Infinity War-esque. We'll see."

Speaking of Ring of Honor, Daniels achieved championship gold last year, and while that's a pretty high bar to surpass, he has some other things to cross off his bucket list.

"Well, I think at this point, having won the championships that I aimed to win in my career, now the opportunities to wrestle different wrestlers is sort of the carrot that is dangling," Daniels said. "There are lots of young guys coming up that I'd like an opportunity to work with, and there are guys that I've never crossed paths with that I'd like to wrestle. I've always said, for me, if I could get the opportunity to wrestle with Chris Jericho, that would be a dream just because he's someone that I try to emulate, someone that I've idolized, and someone that when it comes to reinvention and staying relevant, he sort of wrote the book on that."

Right now Daniels is keeping his future in wrestling open-ended, and just seeing how long he can continue performing at a high level.

"Those are the things, the opportunities and the possibilities of getting in the ring with new wrestlers and new challenges and people that I haven't wrestled yet. That's sort of the goal, and part of it too, for me at this point it's seeing how long I can continue, you know what I mean? I mean, 25 years in, that's a that's a longer career than a lot of guys even get, and I've been very fortunate to stay healthy and stay at a reasonable amount of talent. If I can continue at this pace for a while more, I'm going to. I just wanna see how much more I got in me, man. I've not put any sort of end date or there's no goal in mind. There's not a, "Well, I'm gonna go until this or that, it's just, I'm gonna go until, and let's see what happens."

"I think, to me, I can't envision a reason right now to walk away from doing what I love to do," Daniels said. I still enjoy doing what I do, I love doing it. I'm earning a living doing it, There's nothing that's really made me think, "Oh man, I should start winding this up." It's really more like, let's keep going until there's a reason to not go."

Any match is physically demanding, but ladder matches tend to be on an entirely different level. So, are they really as painful as they look?

"Oh yeah, any time, when you start your wrestling training, it really is just you and the other wrestler in the ropes in the ring. When you start to add paraphernalia into a match whether it's a ladder match or a tables match or anything, any of these outside factors, you start to ramp up the intensity and you ramp up the difficulty in these matches."

"Yeah, ladder matches the expectations that fans come into the show with, they're sort of matched by the expectations that the wrestlers go into it with. We see these as challenges to try and do something different and try to something entertaining. Yeah, it's something where we're looking for ways to tell the good story and entertain the fans and come out of it safe but still do something different, sort of write a different chapter and not be repetitive."

"I've done a lot of ladder matches in my career and usually you come out a little more sore than you would in a regular match," Daniels said. "But I mean, that's also part of the gig, you realize you sign up for these matches or you sign up for these opportunities and you know going in, all right, well this is gonna be a little bit tougher than just your regular one-on-one encounter. We go in knowing we're gonna be a little beat up, but I mean, that's a part of the sacrifice of this job is putting your body out there on the line to go out and live forever basically."

The world of wrestling has changed quite a bit since Daniels first came into the industry, though the biggest changes might just be how people consume it as well as how much people know what goes on behind the scenes.

"I think the biggest change has just been the accessibility of professional wrestling," Daniels said. "In the past 20 years, first there's been that opening, the pulling back of the curtain of what professional wrestling is. Then just the advent of social media has made ... the internet and social media it's made it so much easier to sorta the wrestlers you wanna see and become personally involved in their lives, whether it's following them on Twitter or checking them out on Instagram or whatever on Facebook. Being able to see their stuff as it happens, whether you watch them on a streaming service like WWE Network or the Ring of Honor, Honor Club streaming service that we just established.

"It's never been easier to sorta watch your favorite wrestler and to become emotionally invested in their journey," Daniels said. "You get to be a part of their lives so much easier now. It was so much more protected back in the day when I was starting, there was that buffer between us and the fans, and now, it's just that much easier for fans to sorta get involved with the pro wrestlers."

Those changes do come with their share of challenges of course.

"There's positives and negatives to that too," Daniels said. "It's great for the fans, and sometimes it's difficult for the wrestlers to sort of be able to step away and be human beings. There's a pressure to be the wrestler that you are, that character that you've created 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It's tough for wrestlers sometimes to sort of have that separation between person and character. Some guys handle it very well, some guys don't. I'm not sure what I would change about that, I feel like the genie's out of the bottle in that respect."

As for things he'd like to see change over time, that mostly has to do with a general appreciation of what professional wrestlers do day in and day out.

"But hopefully feel ... I hope that more people learn to respect what professional wrestling is and the toll that it takes on those of us that have chosen to sorta undertake it," Daniels said. "There's a physical crest to the entertainment that we've brought to the world and I think sometimes people take it for granted. They look at it, they see it on television and I think that there's a misconception that because we make it look easy it is easy. But, we're doing it week in and week out and every week you're gonna watch guys wrestle and sort of come back. But there's a toll that we take, there's a toll that it takes on us that it's a tough price to pay. I hope people sort of get that in their head and sort of respect what we're doing, from now on."

Before we parted ways, we did want to get Daniel's comic book pull list recommendations.

"Okay, well, I'll go with Infinity Countdown, first of all, I'm really interested to see where this goes, where Gerry Duggan's bringing with all these different characters and how they're involved with the infinity stones," Daniels said. "I am really enjoying the current Avengers storyline, No Surrender, that Mark Waid, and Al Ewing, and Jim Zub are putting together. I think it's a really cool nice weekly sort of grand epic story going on and I like the ramifications too of the return of the Hulk and what that means for this upcoming Hulk series that Al Ewing's gonna be doing. And the third one, I've really enjoyed the Marvel Two-In-One book that Chip Zdarsky is doing. It's really interesting to see the Thing and the Human Torch sorta interacting. I've dug the art from the first four issues."

You can catch Daniels in action on Supercard of Honor tonight, which kicks off at 7:30 p.m. on Honor Club.