Christopher Daniels Opens Up About His TNA Departure

Former TNA superstar Christopher Daniels recently spoke with Bryan Alvarez of F4Wonline.com. Here are a few highlights:

Reports of low morale in TNA:

“I sometimes wonder, the tendency for anybody, especially when you’re with friends and you’re in the trenches, is to laugh at the stuff that you interpret as ridiculous or silly, and to grouch about the things that you interpret as not being good. That to me isn’t morale, that’s just like getting through the day. As bad as anything ever got, if we were depressed or mad or down in the dumps, there was never a feeling like, ‘Well, let’s storm the castle and kill the king.’ It was just, you know, haha let’s get through the day and still try to put out the best product that we could and take this vision that these guys are putting in front of us and put that on the television show. So, to me, morale was fine. None of us were on suicide watch or anything. It’s just what it was. Whatever positive or negative, whether it’s ratings or house show attendance or pay-per-view buys or whatever, it was never so bad that we were all looking to drink bleach or anything. We grouched about the things that were silly and we were high-fiving ourselves over stuff that we were happy about, whether it was matches or upcoming programs or whatnot.”

His TNA departure:

“I always found it funny when I heard reports that I was one of the higher paid guys on the roster. I’d look at my paycheck and I never thought I was one of the higher paid guys. Essentially my contract was one of those where you only made a lot of money if you worked a lot, and I certainly wasn’t working as much near the end of my contract as I was a year ago. I don’t think that financial reasons were the reason I wasn’t renewed. I don’t know if they thought our act was tired or they wanted to go in a different direction. I’m not sure why that’s the case, especially when I felt like there was a simple and great program in the works between us and Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards but apparently the guys on the creative team didn’t have the same desire to see that program take place.”

Was he surprised about getting released?

“I was as surprised as everybody, or maybe I was more surprised than everybody because I didn’t think it would happen. I had heard the internet rumors as early as January and I was like, ‘This can’t be true. How is this gonna be?’ But it happened and they made the decision to not keep me around, so there you have it.”