WWE Hall Of Famer Diamond Dallas Page spoke with The Mirror (UK) and went over various topics ranging from his fantastic DDP Yoga program, to various stories about his wrestling career and tons more.
Here are the highlights:
Helping People With His Yoga Program:
“I’ve got to say, what I did in my ring career was unbelievable and a dream come true, but what I’m doing today, this is life, this is even cooler. Because if there is ever a time I start to get down, because everybody gets depressed, everybody gets down sometimes, all I have to do is open up a page on the internet and my life shoots up. When I read this kid’s letter to my wife last night, tears were rolling down my face and I can’t read it. I’m probably going to do it at my spoken word because it’s powerful. This kid, I may have changed his life, but he has become super-inspiring to me. So many people tell you what you can’t do, but he’s telling me not only what he can do, but what he’s doing and how he did it. Sometimes you have to come back and teach yourself the same s**t you are teaching everybody else.”
Getting The News That He Was Going To Inducted Into The WWE Hall Of Fame:
“It was super powerful. When I gave the phone back to the producer he said ‘what do you think?’ I said ‘what do I think?’ I wish you were f*****g filming him man. What he was saying was amazing’ and he was like ‘oh yeah, we got it’. I said ‘you got what he was saying?’ and he said ‘this is the end of your biopic’. I go ‘oh dude, that’s awesome’, because I had no idea that’s why they put me on the phone with him. I had rung him beforehand. Most people don’t know it was October when he called me and I’d never heard of anybody in the business finding out about going in the Hall of Fame before January. I thought Paul was calling me back. I couldn’t remember what the hell I had wanted to call him about, that’s what I was focusing on. I was like ‘wait a minute, he’s really putting me over’, then the producer said ‘we’ve been trying to find a way to do this, to get the real emotion of the boys when they find out. To do that, we have to stick a camera in their face and then they would know’. He said Paul told him: ‘we’re making the phone call to Dally today’. That was a last minute call by Paul Levesque because he said it just felt right. I’m so happy that can be the ending because it was amazing. Eric Bischoff’s introduction was amazing too.”
DDP’s Rise To The Top In WCW:
“It’s crazy man. To be in that spot… the best thing that ever happened to me was Sting was going up in the rafters. Now Sting could come down and be the guy, the only guy who really ever saved me. For the guys who have gone in from WCW, of course there is the Four Horsemen, the entire group and of course Naitch going in again by himself. That’s WCW through and through. Of course there is Dusty Rhodes, but he also wrestled in WWE and was already a Hall of Famer. He was at the same level Superstar Billy Graham was, but then The Fabulous Freebirds and Sting, Booker T, even though he was part of us, he had a hell of a run in WWE. But if you really look at it, those and me, to be a part of that group of guys, that means so much. Lex [Luger] deserves to be in there, he deserves his shot and I really hope he gets to be a Hall of Famer and you know of course there are a few other guys too, but that WCW group, is a small group man.”
Being A Part Of The “Invasion” Storyline From 2001:
“You know, I learned a lot of lessons from it. I learned my biggest lesson that you can’t be afraid to walk away from the table. I shouldn’t have done it, but it was a great lesson learned, that’s what I took away from it. You guys have Dragons Den, which became Shark Tank over here. If I hadn’t have gone through that, going into WWE at the wrong time, I never would have got up and walked away from the table when I went on Shark Tank. We went through a lot of s**t to get to the end of Shark Tank, but they wanted me to sign everything away to them. Basically, not my company, but all my rights; my PR, everything. At the end of it I said to my business partner, ‘tell Shark Tank we really appreciate the opportunity, we love the show, but we’re going to pass’. My partner was like ‘what are you talking about bro? We’ve worked so hard on this’. I said ‘I can’t let anybody control me man, I learned that when I went to WWE, I have to be in control of my own destiny. We’ll see if they call back’. Ninety minutes later they called back and said ‘how do we fix this?’
Vince McMahon made me a much better businessman and I’m super thankful to him. The second run they have given me, if I was going to pick between that run in 2001, 2002, or doing what I’ve done in the last five or six years with WWE, I would take that every time. They had me design Topps card, one of them is me wearing my DDP Yoga shirt going into the ring at the Royal Rumble, who do they let do that? You know. Guys don’t even own their own names, I own everything. WWE treats me with such respect and this is the cherry on the top of the ice cream sundae at the end of it all. My business wouldn’t be doing as strong as it is without the support of WWE. They allow me to do a lot of stuff, I just do it and they let me do it, because they know every time I’m a great example for the ‘wrestling afterlife’ and I help the boys. The thing I’m the most excited for is Mick Foley being able to help him. I was there when he put his body through those brutal assaults in the early years. I’m actually writing a book now called ‘Positively Unstoppable – The Art of Owning It.’ Mick Foley wrote the foreword and it’s awesome.
Coming Back For The WrestleMania 32 Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal:
https://youtu.be/Qn3anToxkHQ?t=79
“Yeah I just couldn’t believe it. Vince picked me for that. He only wanted to pick guys who can work and he picked me and Tatanka and gave me my entrance music and it was huge. It was two days before my 60th birthday. I don’t remember if it was $20,000 or $30,000 for me to do it, but I’d have done it for nothing because walking out in front of 101,000 people… one of my buddies got a pic of me throwing up the Diamond Cutter sign and that whole three tiers of the stadium throwing up the sign. No one knew I was going to be doing that. I kept my mouth shut because I always do and it was an awesome pop. I saw Stephanie and Hunter together and I came up behind and just hugged them both, like ‘thank you so much for the birthday present.'”
