Christopher Daniels: I Was Never Told I Would Be The Higher Power, It Would Have Been A Terrible Idea

In 1999, The Undertaker brought in a Higher Power amid his feud with Steve Austin. 

Vince McMahon was revealed as the Higher Power on the June 7, 1999 episode of WWE Raw, delivering the line, “It was me, Austin. It was me all along.” 

For years, the rumor was that Christopher Daniels would be revealed as the Higher Power. Daniels was an unknown independent wrestler at the time. 

“I didn’t hear this until years later,” Daniels said an interview with Chris Van Vliet on Insight. 

When asked if there was any truth to the rumor, Daniels said, “Maybe, but it was never anything that they told me, and honestly, it was a terrible idea anyway. Because the idea would have been Undertaker is answering to this higher power, and then I unmask, and it’s me, and it’s like, Who the f*ck is this guy? It’s sort of like what was going on in my first WCW contract as well. When I first signed with WCW, they had an idea, the way they described it to me was, if Vampiro is Darth Vader, you’re the Emperor. And I was like, Okay. But also, at this point, Vampiro was feuding with Sting, and I was an unknown indie guy, so whatever the reveal was gonna be at that point was gonna be a letdown to me. And so I thought, Okay, we’ll do this. I remember going to WCW one day, cutting this promo backstage with Vampiro, I’ve got this hood, and they’re talking to me, like, ‘All right, talk about harvesting souls and things like that.’ I’m like, okay. So I cut this promo. We get it live, and then I’m back in the locker room, and it comes on live Nitro, and we watch it. And as soon as it’s done, Jeff Jarrett, who happens to be there, and I haven’t really even met Jeff at this point, goes, ‘Who the f*ck was that?!’ And I was like, ‘That’s me sir.’ Then that flopped so quickly that they didn’t go forward with that idea. Then I was just under contract with WCW. I was traveling with them for like, four months, and then they let me go. That was the first contract that I had with them that ended like, JJ Dillon called me, is like, hey, you’re not wrestling a whole lot for us. And I was like, Well, you’re not booking me, so that’s why. It’s not like I’m wasting your money on purpose, sir. But they let me go.”

Asked how he found out about the rumor, Daniels replied, “It came out on the internet. I think maybe Bruce Prichard mentioned it? But yeah, everyone was like, ‘Christopher Daniels was almost the higher power.’ I was like, was he though? I don’t think that’s true. I think maybe it was discussed because I had been going to do WWE dark matches as an extra, and Jim Cornette was always sort of high on trying to get me there early on when the light heavyweight thing was a thing, and they knew I was doing the fallen angel. So I think they thought, Oh, well, maybe this is something that we could use him as. But honestly, I think once Vince saw me, and, you know, I’m 5 10 and this is the time when everybody is six feet something, it’s like, we can do better. And I was like, that makes sense.”

Daniels did have a handful of dark matches with WWE in 1998 and 1999. 

Elsewhere during the interview, Daniels commented on Tiffany Stratton’s Prettiest Moonsault Ever. You can find his full comments here.