Christopher Daniels Talks TNA's Early Days, Sting, Daniel Bryan, His First TNA Release, Hogan, Punk

I recently spoke with TNA Superstar Christopher Daniels. In the second part of the interview below, Daniels discussed working for ROH, Daniel Bryan and CM Punk's WWE success, starting with TNA, Sting, Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff joining TNA, Vince Russo's criticism of him, his TNA departure in 2010 and much more.

Make sure to check back tomorrow for the third and final part of our interview, where Daniels discussed AJ Styles leaving TNA, if the TNA sale rumors affected morale, being paired with Kazarian, Impact going back to Orlando, Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan leaving, tomorrow's Genesis event and much more.

Click here for the first part of the interview, where Daniels discussed breaking into the business, working for the WWF and WCW, growing up as a wrestling fan, his most serious injury and much more.

You can follow him on Twitter @facdaniels , and check out his official website at this link.

Wrestling Inc: You mentioned wrestling all over the world after WCW folded. How valuable do you think that kind of experience is, as far as traveling and working different styles, as opposed to what WWE is moving to now with home growing all of their talent?

Daniels: I think it's invaluable for guys to wrestle a variety of different people only because it gets them more comfortable with themselves. I tell young wrestlers all the time, they need to wrestle as many different people as they can for as many different promotions as they can so that they can get comfortable working with complete strangers for the very first time. A lot of times guys come up from schools and they've wrestled the same people over and over and over and they only get as good as the best person in that pool of people that they're working with. If you can't break out of that pool, if you don't get out of that small system, you're never going to get any better.

I think one of the things the WWE is doing in terms of that, to sort of offset that stagnation, is bring in different trainers, guys that have got that experience, and trying to teach them those different styles in house. Not being part of that, obviously I can't say for sure just because I'm not on the inside. But I know that guys like Norman Smiley, BG James and Billy Gunn and Joey Mercury, all these guys that have done training there, these guys have got experience around the world. So these different trainers, and even guys like William Regal, go in and try and train guys. They've got that experience and they can help these guys sort of learn that style that they have experience in in their careers.

Wrestling Inc: You also worked in ROH for a couple times. You had some great matches with Daniel Bryan, Bryan Danielson at the time, and CM Punk. What was it like working with them at the time? Did you see them going on to have the kind of success that they went on to have in WWE?

Daniels: I always knew that they had the potential for it, it was just a matter of what opportunities were going to come their way. There was a period of time where Bryan wasn't interested in working for the WWE. He just wanted to wrestle, and I guess he thought that the WWE wasn't the best place for him to sort of have the fun in professional wrestling that he wanted to have. I always knew that both of those guys were talented enough and definitely had the drive to be as good as they were. It was really just a matter of having that opportunity afforded to them. It ended up working in their favor and they both, once they were given that opportunity, they both have definitely made the most of those opportunities that were given.

Wrestling Inc: You started with TNA when they first started back in 2002. Around that time there had been a couple of other failed national promotions like XWF that Hulk Hogan was a part of. Did you think that TNA would last as long as it has and burst onto the national scene?

Daniels: Well I definitely hoped that they would have. When we started doing the Wednesday pay per views, there wasn't any outward signs to the guys in the locker room that there were financial troubles. It wasn't until after the fact that we all found out that money wasn't, they weren't making the amount of money that they thought they would. With Panda Energy and Dixie Carter coming along and sort of helping carry the company through those difficult times, we didn't even know about that until after the fact.

But I knew that the Wednesday pay per view, it was a different style. It was a different business model then what I was used to, but I knew I was working regularly and we had an opportunity to sort of make a buzz about the company. That was one of the good things about it, was that there was a lot of hungry people, a lot of guys that had never really had that national spotlight and it was an opportunity to get that spotlight on them.

Wrestling Inc: How would you describe those early years in TNA?

Daniels: I had a great time, man. I think that the one thing, like I said, there were guys that had never really had that opportunity, at the WWE or in WCW, to sort of, get their names known. So we were out there and they just sort of gave us that opportunity, especially with guys in the X Division. They wanted to sort of get that buzz about the company and get the word of mouth going. That was one of the things, man, guys like AJ and Low Ki and Red and Jerry Lynn and me and Elix. We were making, we were sort of the water cooler talk of wrestling. Every Thursday we waited to see if people reacted to what we were doing. We were building good word of mouth about the product.

Wrestling Inc: Definitely, I feel like the best wrestling in the country on a national level was in TNA at that time. You just saw styles that you didn't see anywhere else. What was your reaction when you heard that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff would be coming in?

Daniels: I thought it was going to be a positive thing. I figured that with their name value, television executives and television companies were going to, sort of, pay more attention to us. This was after the fact where we had already been at Spike for a while. We were hoping to strike while the iron was hot in terms of going to the different time changes and the different formats of our show, whether it was an hour show or a two hour show. We're always trying to build momentum and make those small steps forward. Having Hulk and Eric come in, I thought, was another step forward for us in terms of getting more eyes on our product.

Wrestling Inc: Vince Russo was there during that time. He had criticized you in the past about not working on your character and just working on your in ring. What was his plans for your fallen angel gimmick and I guess, what didn't work out for him?

Daniels: I don't know. I don't know. He brought the stuff to me and I thought I did what he asked me to do, and then the feud with Sting ended before it really started. Like my opinion was that they always had other things for Sting to do rather than concentrate on the feud with me. When I asked him about it, he just said it wasn't working and he never really pointed to what wasn't working and why it wasn't working. He just said, "Oh, you know, this isn't going right. We're going to put you back with Triple X." So I mean, my opinion of Vince is that he never really had an idea of what he wanted with me. He never had a way to sort of, vocalize his intentions. He never gave me good direction in terms of what he wanted to see or what was going wrong.

Every time I would ask him, I would come back from a match or come back from a video or a promo, and ask him was that good? Was that what you wanted? And he goes yep, that was what I wanted. Good job. He would never tell me any direction to go. He never gave me any direction to be different. So when he finally said this isn't working out, it surprised me. I didn't know why it wasn't working. With him being the creative voice and not being able to direct, it sort of made it hard, for me anyway, in my experience with him, it was hard to move forward because I had no idea where he wanted me to go.

Wrestling Inc: It seemed like for a while there they were taking the Fallen Angel character, it seemed kind of limiting, like they didn't know where they wanted to go with it. But you did get to work with Sting. You said that he was one of your favorites growing up. What was that experience like?

Daniels: It was fun, man. Getting a chance to share a locker room with him was great, and then finally getting a chance to actually wrestle with him. It meant a lot to me. I thought it was a sign that the company had? I thought it was definitely a sign that somebody had faith in me as a performer, to go out there with one of their top guys and have a singles match. The past couple years too, tagging with Frankie, I've worked a lot with Sting to the point that Sting has told me we're one of his two favorite guys to work with because we're easy to work with. We got out there and have a good time and put on some good matches with him. To sort of, get that nod of respect from him, it has a lot of merit in my eyes.

Wrestling Inc: What led to your release in 2010 from TNA?

Daniels: I think it was really just a matter of the way my contract was structured. At the time I wasn't quite sure what was going on. I thought that things were going well, but I knew that they weren't using me very often. It was partly creative and partly the structure of my contract. I was on the phone with Dixie after the fact, actually Dixie and Vince Russo, and they were like oh, we're going to bring you right back. We've got this idea, and I think some things happened while I was away that changed the idea. So, what I thought was going to be a couple months ended up being 16 months. It ended up being good for me because I ended up going back to Ring of Honor, having good matches with guys like Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards, and I sort of found myself again, back in the wrestling ring, in terms of going out there and having the confidence to be out there with the top guys and have entertaining matches and quality wrestling.

Make sure to check back tomorrow for the third and final part of our interview, where Daniels discussed AJ Styles leaving TNA, if the TNA sale rumors affected morale, being paired with Kazarian, Impact going back to Orlando, Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan leaving, tomorrow's Genesis event and much more.

Click here for the first part of the interview, where Daniels discussed breaking into the business, working for the WWF and WCW, growing up as a wrestling fan, his most serious injury and much more.

You can follow him on Twitter @facdaniels , and check out his official website at this link.