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DDP Is Changing The World! Randy Orton's RKO, Cody Rhodes, Royal Rumble, DDPY
https://cvvtix.com - Tickets for the first ever INSIGHT LIVE the day before the Royal Rumble on January 31, 2025 in Indianapolis are on sale now!
Diamond Dallas Page (@RealDDP) is a retired professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Atlanta, GA to discuss being in phenomenal shape at 68 years of age, helping the stars of the past and present recover from injuries and addictions, his recent work with Lex Luger, being a surprise entrant in the 2015 Royal Rumble, if Randy Orton asked permission to use the Diamond Cutter as his finisher and more!
Quote I'm thinking about: "When the old man knocks, I don't let him in." - Clint Eastwood
Subscribe to DDP's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Dallapage
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"No [laughs]. It's so important for me, my body feels good. I remember Bruno Sammartino and I did something. My buddy Sal Corrente was really the first guy, and he was ahead of his time to do it. I can't remember what he called it, but it was something of Meet the Freats. It was some wrestling name Rumble, I can't remember what it was called, but he promoted it so well that he got me and Bruno on ESPN to talk about this show. Dusty was a headliner as a signer, and Bruno feuded with Zybysko, and I was going to be his second and get it in wrestle for Bruno, who, at the time, is 70. I love Bruno Sammartino, dude, you don't get no bigger than Bruno. So I tell Bruno, I go, because here is what we're going to do at the end, we'll do the schmoz, and you come in and you light Larry up. [He says] Oh no, no, Diamond, I don't feel too good. Aches and pains? Most of them are gone. I'm good. I'm like, okay, Bruno. You know what happened at the end? He went in there and lit Larry up, he couldn't stop himself. I am there for a diamond cutter. I do want to hit one when I'm 70."
"Let's go back to the last time that I did a Rumble. No one knows it. We have The Resurrection of Jake the Snake at the Slamdance Film Festival, the same time as the other big Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, no one knows. I fly up to Jersey, and they drive us into Philly, they're having a big party, and everybody's saying I'm not there because my throat, oh my God, my throat was so bad. There was an interview on YouTube of me with Larry King and Scott and Jake and I blew it out pushing myself too much. So I got enough of a voice to talk, and I get a text from Cody. He goes, how apropos, I will be the first that you hit with the cutter. And it was Cody, and then Fandango, and then the immortal Bray Wyatt, bringing boom, boom, boom. Then PS Hayes, the booker, right? He's booking this whole thing. He goes, and then, you know what happens? Me and Bubba, who's also going to be in the Rumble, look at each other. Here comes Randy, and he goes. So he's going to take you out of like and me and Bubba looked at you're like, really? Like, wait a second, the legend killer and Randy, a lot of people have heard me talk about him. One of my favorites, one of my favorites of all time. I think the most underrated guy maybe ever in our business. Because even though he's seen here, he could be on Mount Rushmore. I mean, he's had everything, and he's still got the look and the size and the rap and the work and the promo. I mean, again, he's a guy who's gotten all the breaks and freaking kicked their asses. The Legend Killer, but haven't killed me yet [laughs]. I want to take it so bad. I had this vision of the rumble, right? And friggin he comes down. Here, comes Randy. And he goes for it, and I get out of it. And then I go for it. He gets out of it, and then it turns into, of course, the RKO."
"Randy wasn't there when I left. I called him later on about it. I wanted him to use it. But he never remembered the phone call, because he was coming out of surgery, and it was right around the time that I had called him, he was all banged up, because you come out of surgery and stuff. Later on, like Michael PS Hayes and Johnny Ace is really the originator of the one arm kick it out. Randy took it with the jump, and Randy did things with that sh*t that I wasn't athletic enough to do what he did, and I love what he did with it, but my favorite cutter ever, I had him on an interview with me recently. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Me and Sammy Guevara. And that him and Cody. And before that, it was Frankie and Chris."
"I owed him. There was a point in time during the f*cking pandemic, those f*ckers for doing that to us. There was a time where I really bought into it, like I thought, f*ck this sh*t. These guys are serious before I really realized everything that was happening. But at one point, I kept telling Jake, because he was staying with me for a while over that period. And I said, 'Listen Jake, if you go out to work. I got Brittany here, my daughter, my granddaughter, Oakley, and Paige. Dude, I don't want you to bring anything back, bro. If you leave, you're gonna have to stay gone.' He's like, 'Okay, I gotta go to work.' Okay, so we end up in a hotel room, and then at some point in that hotel, is no one except for Jake and the person who's working the desk. So it's really kind of like, What's that movie that Jack Nicholson was in? The Shining. It's kind of like that. I saw a tweet or something Jake did that was kind of rough, and I called him up. I said, 'What do I tell you? I'm coming to get you.' So I come upstairs, and I see Brittany. She's in the kitchen. And I said, 'Listen, I know I told her he couldn't come back, but I'm gonna go get Jake. I'm gonna bring him back.' She goes. I love Jake, but doesn't he have other family he can go to?' I said, 'Little girl, I don’t own this house without him.' [She says] 'You're right, Dad, you're right.' So Jake and Dusty, those cats they were. I mean, I had the greatest minds in the world mentoring me."
"I think it was SummerSlam Cody had said, 'Did you hear about the email that went around?' I said, No. And they said, these are the legends who are going to be here. And they just brought different guys in. I was there because Bron Breakker he’s working in his gym with me for two years. I was helping him get ready for Baltimore to go for the Ravens, and that didn't work out, but he's going to be a mega star in WWE. So getting there to see him win the Intercontinental Championship was huge and always being there for Cody for me. But when they sent that email out, they had a little bio on each person, just a little one, and what they said to their crew, the boys and the girls, because a lot of those people don't even know how we are. They weren't even born. You know what I mean? It’s understandable. It's like, here's who they are. Just don't say hello, thank them. And that was really cool for me. I'm a fan of CM Punk and just this is whole, just his whole Punkism that he is, how he is so over with the people. He literally came up to me when he saw me hey DDP! He gave me a hug and he said, Hey, man, just want to welcome you in and thank you. That was super cool. And I got a lot of respect for him anyway, because it's amazing to me, the grip he has on the people, like he can do no wrong, man."
"You said there in the press conference, you need to ask him [Cody Rhodes] the first question. And next thing I know, they're handing me [the mic] and I'm asking him for the first question. That is the power of manifesting something into reality. It starts with a thought that is a spoken word and then repetition. I've lived the dream over and over and over again. I've also failed on the way there. And I used to say a line every wrestler says, but it's not about how many times I fall down. It's about how many times I get back up again."
"[He’s been in a wheelchair] 15 years. You know the craziest part about that the day that he got paralyzed, I'm not sure exactly why it happened, but I have been wanting to see him because I'd heard he found God, and he had gone through this change. To be honest, I couldn't believe it, because I know Lex, and I know when Sting got saved Lex would bury it. He loves Sting, but the God sh*t? He wasn’t buying it. I know the good and the bad of Lex, and I still love him through all of that. Once we became bros, we were tight as hell, but I hadn't talked to him in a long time, and he had gone through a lot of things that had happened over that period, and Eric Watts is the one who told me. He goes, 'You gotta see Lex. You're not gonna believe it.' I go, 'What do you mean?' I go, you hate Lex. He's like, No, I don't. I go, you wanted to beat his ass. You hated Lex. And he's like, you're right, I did, but I don't anymore, we're roommates. What universe am I in? That's how much Watts hated him, and he's like, you gotta see this man. His belief in Christ and everything. It's real. And I said, Man, I'm going to San Francisco next week. I can't wait to see him. And that was the night that Lex ended up going down and the promoter, who had just paid me said, I just got a call. Lex had some kind of heart attack or something. There's EMTs in there. He didn't know why, there was no heart attack, but when I ran to the room where he was at there's Lex sitting in a chair, and like, Lex, I come up and I give him a hug. Are you okay? He goes, I'm okay. Dally, I'm okay. He didn't hug me or anything. I didn't really realize. I wasn't thinking at the time, but looking back, I know he didn't. The EMTs are like, Lex, you have to go to the hospital. [he said] No hospitals. Lex didn't have anything then. He didn't want any more debt. He's a very proud guy, and he didn't want any of that. I'm looking to him, and I know things that have happened to the boys when something like this happens, [I said] 'You got to go to hospital, you got to go, bro.' He goes 'You think so, Dally?' I'm like 'bro, you got to go.' And he goes, 'Well, you know, my hips are bad.' I go, 'I'll help you.' So an EMT got on one side, got another, and we picked him up, laid him on a table, and they took him off. The guys who were the EMTs, this is God's work, they're both humongous wrestling fans. They're in freaking San Francisco, they're in Cow Palace area. This is the hood. They go through all those towns to get to Stanford, which is one of the best hospitals that there is. And the nurse, when he gets there, name is Charity. They end up taking him, I believe, a couple of days first class. They have to wheel him in. I don't know how the hell they got it all done, but they fly him into Atlanta, where he goes to the Shepherd Center, and his nurse is Hope, and he's in, no bullshit, room 316, so whatever is happening here, me and Steve [Borden] are there the next day, and by this time, he's starting to get movement back in his fingers and his arms a little bit, no legs. And Lex had a hospital that was going to give him new hips, but now he's paralyzed. Somehow, Lex talks them into giving him new hips, even though he has no movement because his rationale was that if you get me moving, I won't be able to walk anyway, because I couldn't walk before. They put the new hips in and over time, I've got video footage of me and Lex working together with Steve taking this from 14 years ago, okay, maybe more than that, how many years ago it was. And then Lex finally gets up, and he starts eventually, because he's so relentless, moving and walking with a crook thing, and then a cane, and then no cane, and then he hit a pothole, and he went down, and that's where he was for the last X amount, whatever years it's been. When he saw the Butterbean video, we were both at Sting's last match, I'm sitting there watching the monitor, and we're the two guys who are WWE guys, basically said we're going, you good with that? We're not going to go on camera. We're good? And they were great. And he rolled up next to me, and he goes, ;Dally, I saw the Buttebean video, bro. I didn't know you had chair workouts.' I said, 'Well, I didn't have them back when you and I were working, I got them now.' He goes, 'Do you think maybe we could start?' I'm like, 'Dude, how many times have I asked you to start back up again? I'm like, absolutely, come over Monday.' And we got met up after that, and we've been working together about whenever Sting's match was, that following Monday?"
"I don't know. I mean, I really don't. There's so much nerve damage in there. I really don't know, but I do know that if it's possible, Lex is gonna do it. There's so many things I do in the chair workouts, even the bed. No one could tell me you can't do DDP yoga. It starts in bed. You can't get out of bed? I got nine workouts for you in bed. Then sitting in a chair. That's where I focus most of my things, chair and then getting him to stand up and then go back down and stand up and go back down. Standing is one thing. He can stand, but it's for moments, that’s a huge deal. We're going to put that video out soon to let people see. It's shaky, but it's pretty amazing. And again, what I do is every time he works out, it's a completely different workout. I'm adding, subtracting, changing, growing, and I've never done this before with anyone. So I've got our first workout. Do you know how many people are in chairs that aren't paralyzed? There's a lot. How many people are in those little scooters? There's a lot and they'd like to be out of that. Well, you could start here, because this guy was paralyzed and he's got nerve damage, you can surely do what he did on day one. But every week, we'll be on the app at some point, when we get to wherever we're going to, it'll all be in a sequence. So you could wherever you're at start where he's at."
"My wife and kids, the openness that it took to be open and that I know how to be grateful."
