Slowly but surely, Kip Sabian has become a prominent player in All Elite Wrestling. Recently, he has regularly been featured on AEW Dynamite alongside Miro and Penelope Ford. In some ways, Sabian might owe this success to Christopher Daniels, a longtime veteran who now serves as the company’s head of Talent Relations.
In a recent appearance on “Excuse Me: The Vickie Guerrero Show,” Sabian described how Daniels recruited him to AEW before it actually existed. But first he recalled how his connection with “The Fallen Angel” began with an unfruitful request for advice at a show in England.
“Christopher Daniels was at [this] show, and I came backstage after the show,” said Sabian. “Me and my buddy had ridden with Daniels earlier in the day, so I’d gotten to know him. And he’d watched my match. I’d asked if he’d watch it, he watched it, and I was like, ‘Have you got any advice? Please give me advice.’
He just said, ‘Get some more color in your gear,’ because I was wearing black gear at that point. I was like, ‘Anything else, please, anything else?’ And he’s like, ‘Just get a contract.’
“Thanks for that, nice one.”
Sabian then stated that, despite this uninspiring first impression, Daniels sought him out for a Ring of Honor tour in what became his first step toward AEW.
“Later on that year I get a, this is when Daniels was working at Ring of Honor, I get random inbox out of nowhere,” said Sabian. “‘Hey man, do you want to work the Ring of Honor U.K. tour from this date to this date?’ Let me check my schedule, yes please.
“So I did that tour, I worked Daniels again, I worked with a few other guys, I worked with Hangman. It was great, I really enjoyed it. Went back home, still stayed in contact with Daniels. And then it was Daniels who was the first person to contact me about All Elite Wrestling because he told me like, ‘I’ve got something in the works, can’t give any details yet, but just hold off on signing anything.'”
“Superbad” continued to hone his craft, and he gained experience working on television, while he waited to hear back from Daniels. He emphasized that the former Ring of Honor World Champion discouraged him from signing elsewhere while AEW was in its formative stage.
“And then I did the World of Sport TV company, World of Sport being one of the most influential British wrestling promotions of all time,” said Sabian. “I did that, that was good fun. I got to work on TV, I learned all about cameras and those kind of things. So then that finished and I wasn’t signed for like, once the TV had finished, I had like X amount of time that I wasn’t able to take a TV contract. And then I was a free agent basically.
“So the time passed, Daniels said, ‘Don’t sign with anyone else, no matter what anyone says.’ I was waiting out because I respect Daniels, you know what I mean? He’s a legend in the business. But at the time, I had no idea what was going on.
“And then yeah, one day, I’m at a show like six hours away from my house, I finish the show, I’m on the long drive home, I get this email. I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s from Christopher Daniels. I’ll check it, who knows?’ Boom, there it is. ‘We’d like you to do this with All Elite Wrestling.'”
The full episode is available here:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5xqbtgfEkVF66057OleBuE?si=gTyottauQRaumdky5cYOEQ
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