“It was me Austin! It was me all along!”
Those were the words of the evil Mr. McMahon character to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin when he was infamously unveiled as the “higher power” mystery character tied to The Undertaker during the early days of the WWE Attitude Era.
During a recent appearance on the INSIGHT podcast with Chris Van Vliet, current AEW producer and pro wrestling legend Christopher Daniels addressed the longstanding rumor that he was supposed to be the man behind the “higher power” mystery, as well as how he found out about it.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where “The Fallen Angel” touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On the rumor he was going to be the higher power in WWE: “I didn’t hear this until years later. [So is there any truth to it?] 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.”
On how he found out about the rumor: “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.”
Check out the complete Christopher Daniels interview from INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet at ChrisVanVliet.com.
