DDP recently shared memories of the Ultimate Warrior and more.
Here are the highlights…
On the energy backstage at the WWE Hall
Of Fame: “The Hall of Fame was really cool, getting there was the
journey, the whole thing with Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Scott Hall. It was
great to see both those guys be inducted, they both put a lot of work in. It’s
one of those things, so many people bring it up, you get to the end and go, okay
we got here, awesome, dreams do come true, but both of those guys are still
addicts, so they fight it daily. I’ve had people come up to me and say dude
you’ve cured Jake “The Snake” Roberts and I’m like what?, no, I never did that.
All I did was help him, guide him and put him in a positive environment. Jake
could fall down tomorrow and he does from time to time. He doesn’t live with me
anymore, I can’t be his keeper, I just hope he can stay on the right track, but
someone like Jake or Scott, either one of those guys could fall and hopefully
not too far, because we can fall too far and then the promoters and everyone
don’t want to deal with that stuff, but as of right now, it was a glorious
moment.”
On how it felt personally for him to see Jake and Scott
be inducted: “It actually felt great man, for Scott’s speech I went
out in front and sat with my girl and my ex-wife Kimberly, they were both there,
they’re friends and we watched Kevin (Nash) come out and then Scott and
afterwards I went backstage again. To be in that whole…..That’s like the highest
honor you can get in our business, I think it even crosses over World
Championships to that next level. There’s still certain people that belong and
should be in there and that will always be the case, but eventually, sometimes
that takes a while, everyone gets their turn. I said it 18 months earlier, we
set the big pie in the sky dream that we would be on this (Hall of Fame) stage
on this night. Jake didn’t think that was possible, but Jake had to go through a
lot of changes for that to happen and he did and it was a journey. We’ve done
the movie, that’s where the movie ends, I’m sure we’ll have a little trail-off,
because I don’t know exactly what will happen in the next 6 months, 8 months
before we’ve got the film completely tied up. I’ve been filming with director
and co-producer Steve Yu the resurrection of Jake The Snake’s story and that
details Scott Hall coming in and where he was when he started and that journey
and a lot of it is really fun and inspirational, while some of it is dark.
There’s dark moments man and there’s times where the 3 of us did not get
along.”
On the passing of Ultimate Warrior and his
memories: “The first time I was on a card or an event with the Warrior
was at WrestleMania 6 and I didn’t get the gig, my car did, I was Diamond Dallas
Chauffeur for Rhythm N Blues and I got to meet a lot of the boys. I was in the
AWA at the time as a manager, but everybody dreamed of being at WrestleMania,
this is the spot and I’m there. I may be driving a Cadillac, but you know what,
none of my other buddies are. Hulk Hogan came up to me and was so nice to me and
talked about my gimmick and we talked for about 10 minutes and it was amazing.
Really, the only superstar I wanted to meet that evening and didn’t get the
chance to was Warrior, that would happen 10 years later when he came in in WCW
to start up his feud with Hulk Hogan and when he got to TV, I was planning on
going by, I was looking forward to shaking his hand and meeting him, maybe
having some kind of a relationship with him and one of the agents came by and
said DDP, you want to meet The Ultimate Warrior and I said absolutely, I’ll be
down there later, but the agent said that he sort of asked me to come by and
grab you and Goldberg and see if you guys would want to meet him and I was like
he’s requesting US to come by, sure, I’ll come with you. I walked down there and
gave him a big hug and he talked about how much fun he’s had watching us (DDP
and Goldberg) and how we made him want to get back in the business. The main
event that they would be working towards would be Halloween Havoc and how
anything is possible in this world. 10 years later, from working at the Skydome,
being a chaufeur and watching Hogan vs. Warrior for the title to watching them
10 years later, but this time I’m going for the World Championship against
Goldberg. It took a fan writing me that on Twitter to really put that in
perspective and I was like, woah, I never really put that together. I saw him at
WrestleCon last year and we talked for a little bit and he was so blown away by
what I was doing with DDP Yoga and Scott and Jake and he said, you’re doing
God’s work man. He’s a big God man, I am too, I’m not the big preacher guy, but
I’m a big God man. For him to give me the shoutout at the Hall of Fame for him
being inducted, not once, not twice, but like 4 times and it was a little
tongue-in-cheek funny, but he respected what I was doing. I never got a chance
to thank him for that, because that was just so cool of him to do
that.”
You can check out the full interview at this link.
