The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with “The Fallen Angel” Christopher Daniels:

DD: “You were a member of the Funkin’ Dojo in 1998 and during this time wrestled several televised and dark matches for the then WWF, how did this come about and what exactly was your relationship with the WWF?”

CD: “Well, my friend from Windy City [Pro Wrestling], his name was Kevin Quinn, had met Victor Quinones when he was in Puerto Rico, and so through him I knew Victor and I decided to go to WWF television taping in Phoenix and Victor set up a Shotgun Saturday Night match between me and Taka Michinoku and that match sort of got me on the map with the WWF guys, they offered me a spot in one of the Funkin’ Dojo’s, which was basically a try out camp when that was going on, when they had those dojo’s at Titan Towers and Dory Funk [Jr] was running them it was sort of a tryout camp, so I went and I did that camp with guys like Kurt Angle and Test and Steve Williams, Tiger Ali Singh, Steve Corino, I went through that Dojo and on occasion did dark matches, I on occasion did televised matches for WWF and sort of kept in touch throughout my career and tried to get in, and just something never clicked, I guess they never saw anything in me that they wanted to put any effort into so I never really had any long term relationship with them other than the occasional dark match.”

LB: “Something I was always wondering, what was the inspiration behind The Fallen Angel gimmick?”

CD: “The Fallen Angel was a name that I came up with just I was a good guy and became a bad guy and that was sort of the influence of that but then once I saw Dustin Runnels do the Goldust character I was really impressed on how that character and his take on sexuality, sort of, touched everyone across the board, no matter where you’re from or what you’re background was, everyone has a strong opinion about their own sexuality and so they reacted accordingly to what Dustin was doing so I looked at that and thought what other topics does everybody have a strong reaction to and the answer I came up with was religion so I came up with this idea of someone with a God complex, someone who thought he was God and I sort of tinkered with it over the years in places like Ring Of Honor, places like TNA and I had different levels of success with it, I was just very lucky to have a gimmick like that and very lucky to have that opportunity.”