In an exclusive interview with CasinoBeats, WWE legend ‘DDP’ Diamond Dallas Page talks about his trip to Las Vegas for Wrestlemania 41. DDP points to the WWE stars that shone the brightest in the Casino capital of the world.

Dallas Page also picks the stars on the current WWE roster that he believes are set for more great nights in Las Vegas.

Diamond Dallas Page: Oh man. I know it sounds crazy to say it, but I just turned 69. And I’m married to the most amazing woman, and I’ve had some great women in my life! But my wife, her first name is Payge, and her maiden name is Mcmahon, no relation to Vince!

We just built this beautiful retreat in Panama City Beach, Florida, and I’ll be doing retreats in the spring and the fall, it’s 9,000 square feet. Got nine bedrooms. I’ll bring people in for some closeup personal DDP Yoga and power cups and just overall just a wellness retreat.

And I’ve got no mortgage, so I am living the dream on its highest. I’m living my best life in answer to your question, Kyle, at 69, I never thought that would ever be possible, but it’s true. 

A: I tried it when I was 23. When I say tried it, three times I was in the ring and I hurt my knee. And it took me out of the game because I hurt my knee and then I had a chance to run my first little nightclub. And the booze, the broads and the party took me to different spot. And then just like that, guess it was 1986, Jake the Snake Roberts walked into my club. In Fort Myers, Florida. I was running a huge club by that time and it brought back so many memories of me wanting to be a wrestler. But I was 31, so I thought I was too old. Actually, I was 30 at that time. I thought I was too old to be a wrestler. So I took care of Jake. And if you work Miami one night then Tampa, the next, that was 300 miles, so it was a great layover for the boys, and Jake told the guys about me and Ted DiBiase, The Bushwhackers, all these guys are coming to my club.

And it just brought that want and desire of ‘God, I wish I could have done that.’ And it all started out as me just talking shit after work, drinking with my crew, and that’s where Diamond Dallas Page, the Diamond Exchange and The Diamond Dallas all came from. In my head it was an idea, a fun idea, never a reality. And look what happened!

A: You know, one of my favorite moments was when I was managing The Freebirds. And the reason why I started to wrestle it starts with Magnum T.A. pulling me in the office, before tv and I don’t notice at the time, but I’m about to be the manager for The Freebirds one more time. Scott Hall, who was a diamond stud, he was injured and on a reserve list. So those were the only two guys I was managing. And Magnum pulls me in the office and he says, ‘Dusty, (who was my man, my mentor, my brother,) doesn’t have the stomach to do this, he asked me to do it. We can’t let you manage anymore.’ And I was like, ‘well, what did I do wrong?’ He goes, ‘really nothing.’ I go, ‘well, why can’t I manage? We can fix it.’ He goes, ‘not really.’ I said. ‘Not really? What can’t we fix?’ He goes, ‘you! It’s the hair, the clothes, the bling, the diamond dolls, the wrap. When you’re out there, you just take away so much attention from the boys and the guys who draw the money.’

So I said, ‘Magnum, are you telling me I’m too over the top for professional fu**ing wrestling?’ And he laughed and he said, ‘what we should have done was put you in a pair of tights and boots and see if you could do this.’ Now I’m about to walk out. I got really depressed, like bad, like anybody would initially. But within three hours I had realised, ‘wait a minute, I got seven months left on my contract. I’m gonna go down that power plant. I’m gonna learn how to wrestle.’ And The Freebirds, who were the biggest ribbers of all time, they loved me, like their younger brother, even though I was older than f**king both of them, but they loved me. This is the moment where they were empathetic to me losing my gig, right? And I said, ‘don’t worry about me guys.’ I said, ‘I got seven months left of my contract. I’m gonna learn how to wrestle.’ And Michael looked at Jimmy, and Jimmy looked at Michael, and they burst out laughing so hard.

Michael fell down on the ground and I gave him both your number one and went to the ring and six years later, I had a match with Sting, and I know the exact date. It was January 24th. I’d never worked with Sting before. I am not a Jobber anymore. I’m a bottom of the mid-card guy. But I go in to talk to Sting about having this match and he says, I walked in going, ‘so Stinger, what do you want to do?’

He said, ‘what do you want to do?’ I go, ‘what do I want to do?’ He goes, ‘you don’t think I’ve been watching you? I want to see what you got.’ And I laid out this match, bro. It was only about seven minutes. Right in the beginning I had him boom, boom. And then he came back and went right for the scorpion deathlock. I got to the ropes, went to the floor, so I’d gotten outta Stinger’s deathlock. And the diamond cutter was just starting to take off whenever I get to use it. So people knew, ‘wait a minute, there’s something here.’ And that was the first time I walked into the back because I’m wrestling for the people, but I’m really wrestling for the guys in the back, to get them to notice what I’m doing. And when I walked through that curtain, that was my first standing ovation. But where the real standing ovation came. Was later the next day. When I would get home on a Tuesday, and that was Monday Nitro. Whenever I’d get home on a Tuesday,I’d go to the gym, chiropractor, applied kinesiology, deep muscle massage therapist and tanning salon. That’s where I went on my day off. I’m home at eight o’clock at night. This day, I had forgotten something. So I ran home, heard the phone ringing as I was running out the door and I hear ‘Page, hey ass.’ And I go, ‘oh my God, Michael.’ I ran back in and while he is talking I pick up the phone and say, ‘Mike, dude, what’s up man?’ 

He’s like, ‘God damn, mother son of a bag’ I said, ‘Mike. What’s the matter?’ He’s like, ‘Page. You know how you call someone in the middle of the day because you don’t want to talk to ’em. You wanna leave a message?’ I said, ‘yeah. Do you want me to hang up so you can call back and leave a message?’ He said, ‘No. F*ck it. You’re on now. Page, I gotta be honest with you, we saw your match last night. We all did. And I gotta tell you, I have never been so happy to eat crow in all my life. Great match.’ Then he hung up on me. For Michael P.S. Hayes, if he was 27 years old right now, he would be one of the most over guys in the history of professional wrestling. I mean, he had so much charisma and he was freaking handsome as hell, and he knew how to work enough. And the bottom line is for that guy who would always tell me when I screwed up. He took pleasure in telling me how proud he was of me, and that was a big moment for me to believe in me even more.

A: I think it was a setup to a match and me being the only one to say no to the NWO. That was my idea, and it came off of me wrestling Eddie Guerrero for like three months and really getting over with the boys at the end of 1996. And I was not supposed to win that match at Halloween Havoc. Eddie came off the top rope to me on the floor and he tore some of the white cartilage in between the ribs and in the middle of the comeback, Eddie stopped me and said, ‘Diamond Cutter!’ I went, ‘what? No!’ He said, ‘Diamond Cutter. Diamond Cutter.’ So now I beat Eddie. That’s a big win, but it didn’t translate that with the booking committee, and I’m still in the same spot. And so I went to Kevin Nash and I told him about the idea. He told me to go see Eric Bischoff. I said, ‘no, I gotta see Scott first.’ 

And he reminded me, that without me, Scott Hall never has the career he has because I changed his whole look. I got him in front of Dusty and in front of Magnum T.A. because they didn’t think that Big Scott Hall could draw money. Well, the guy who became the Diamond Studd, who became Razor Ramon was one of the smartest guys in the business.

He’s Jake Roberts when it came to the psychology of wrestling in general, so for me, when I told Scott the idea, he’s like, ‘I love it. Go tell Bischoff. I said ‘no, we’ll tell Bischoff tonight.’  One of the really cool things, I don’t know if you guys know this, but Nitro would air live from 8pm to 11pm. And because of the three hour time difference going to LA, it would play again from 11pm to 2am. So we got to go to the bar at the hotel we were at and watch the matches. And that’s where I didn’t tell Eric the idea, ‘oh, I wanna drop the two most over guys in professional wrestling right now.’ Like he would’ve looked at me and said, ‘no, you’re not!’ So Kevin Nash said it. Whole different animal. So they set up, which made Randy Savage want to work with me because I couldn’t have said, ‘you know what? I wanna work a story with Randy Savage.’ Not at that point in my career. You know, it had to come from Randy and then we were so hot. I mean the crowds were so hot and that whole thing with me and Randy and Kimberly and defending her honour, and I mean so many people can relate to that. And man, the promos that we cut back and forth and the live energy of the crowd, it was unbelievable. And the night before, the pay-per-view. We were in a town called Florida, South Carolina. No cameras, no phones, and Arn Anderson walked in and said, ‘what do you want to do tonight, Randy?’ Because every night, DDP got left laying or hit a couple of Diamond Cutters and got left laying or hit a diamond cutter on Virgil and escaped through the crowd.

But most of the time, a DDP was left laying. Arn Anderson said, ‘so what do you want to do tonight, Mach (Randy Savage)?’ And he’s tying his boots. I’ll never forget it. He looks up at me and he goes, ‘I think I want to take the Diamond Cutter.’ And man, Arn was like, ‘well, I hope you know what this could do for your career.’

I’m like ‘yeah!’ But this is a house show. This ain’t tv. This ain’t a pay-per-view. It’s a house show. Randy was testing the waters and when he heard that pop, when I hit that Diamond Cutter out of nowhere and I’m laying on my face because he just beat the hell outta me, the whole match. And so I’m laying there on my face.

He’s laying on his back. About 10 or 15 seconds later, I just laid my arm over him. 1, 2, 3. The place went ballistic and all I could do as loud as it was was hear him say, ‘well, guess we knew what we’re doing for Spring Stampede.’ And I thought to myself, man, if that happens. That will change my life dramatically. And to be honest, Kyle, I had no idea how much that was gonna change my life. It was insane. 

A: Randy. Because you see, they used to bust my balls all the time for being one of the guys that wanna lay out a match. Because I want to tell the best story, and I want to make sure you understand when I say ‘catch the boot,’ you know which way to spin me. Because if you don’t know, it can look really stupid. But if you know. It can be really devastating. And the only other guy who did that, and no one ever busted his balls, was Randy Savage. You’ve heard the stories, Randy had every move down. And then we’ll do this, and then we’ll do that. And then we’ll do this to a guy who’s never done it before. It’s really foreign because there’s so much to remember. But for me and Randy, it was like playing tic-tac-toe and we would have our plan, but I called it preparation and improvisation, that’s what I used to call it. And with me and him, it was golden. And if you look at the guys today, they all do it that way. Who were the first two? Me and Savage.

A: Ah, God. There were so many good ones. But I literally have to say Tank Abbott and Tank Abbott was an MMA fighter who came in, legitimate badass dude, and the Diamond Cutter was a shoot hold. One of your brothers, Stephen Regal, the great Lord Stephen Regal, who was one of the best technical wrestlers maybe ever, but definitely in that top 1%. But there’s a hold that you craft. It’s not like a headlock. It’s reversed and it’s a cravat. And if I put you in that cravat and you don’t go, you are going anyway. And Tank happened. When I went, I don’t think he was ready because I came down, his feet went straight up and he came down flat. I was just happy that he was a tough son of a bitch because that could do some serious damage. And I tell him, if you don’t go, you are going anyway. He was pretty devastating looking. 

A: Oh, yes. It’s funny because in WCW up until Randy Savage, I wrote every storyline I ever had because no one believed in me. No one believed that I was ever gonna draw money and I wasn’t one of their favorites. And all those guys who I’ve become as tight as brothers can be, wanted to choke some of those guys out on the booking committee. I love them all. They all made me work harder. 

I was just on Undertakers podcast, which was a great, great show. I just finished doing LFG with Taker. And over the last 10 years, me and Taker have gotten to be really tight. But back then, WCW was coming in, I never realized the heat that we had because what are you talking about? Heat? I mean if anything WCW made the WWF the best it’s ever been. You know, it’s iron versus iron, iron sharpens iron, you know? So I never thought especially that there would heat be heat towards me as a character. But I didn’t realize, and it was funny. Taker said when we got to the part about WWE.I have to say before this, he put me over so strong throughout that interview. I mean, my heart was touched because Taker knows who the real Dallas Page is today and has for a number of years now. But back then, there was this new meat coming in and he said ‘I’ve been accused of trying to ruin your career and these guys don’t understand, I didn’t book that!’ And I said ‘bro, we’re good!’ Because it wasn’t his idea.  Vince wanted to see every WCW guy beat down, especially the only top guy besides Booker T, that came there. And I represented WCW. I’m the only guy who didn’t trade over at the height of my career, like everybody did. And so I was the kind of the face of WCW. And I get it and I explained it to Taker. I said, ‘you know what, I learned from that though?’ But I am never in the position that I am today without going through what I went through going into the WWE because it taught me that you can’t be afraid to walk away from the table. Like if you know you’ve got what they want. My idea would’ve been People’s Champion vs People’s Champion and that would’ve gotten so over and The Rock, whether he was told to take it down or no sell or whatever, it really wouldn’t have been Rock’s character or Takes. Taker’s character is a dead man. He doesn’t sell! He does. And he has, but you can go back to that character for that. So that made sense, you know? But I would love to have worked with Taker. I wish I’d gone in there a year earlier because man, we’d have lit it the f*ck up. We would’ve had a lot of fun. 

It’s not my favorite time going in there, but I am loving being part of the Legends program and being able to have a direct line to talk to the guys. Whether it’s Nick Aldis or Triple H or you know, Michael B.S. Hayes. I could talk to any of those guys. I can make a phone call and talk to them. I have such a great relationship with everyone at the WWE. I love what they’re doing right now. I never thought, being completely transparent. I never thought it could ever be bigger than our time because even the 90s spanked the 80s to a certain degree. I mean,  because it was just so reality based, driven and what had happened. But I have to take that back because man, the WWE is the hottest thing in the world and they have given us as wrestlers, sports entertainers, a whole other level when you got the biggest star in the world is one of us. Everybody knows it. The Rock is the guy and he’s been on top for a decade and John Cena killing it, Batista killing it and getting the biggest roles in acting. I mean, I’m so proud all those guys. They represent us so well. 

A: I think some shit got carried over. It’s funny, me and Scotty Steiner, we had a fight in the back. I’m so thankful I survived. But me and Scotty would go out there next time and just frigging lay it down. Today, I consider him one of my very good friends, love his kids. I go to some of the games with Scotty to see his kids play. I think we’re maybe one of the most dysfunctional families ever, professional wrestling, but we’re dysfunctional among ourselves. We don’t let anybody else step in and talk shit about us. You know what I mean?

A: Oh God. A lot of ’em. A lot of them. I look right away to Drew McIntyre, Roman Reigns. Of course Cody would’ve done incredible. I’m very proud of Jey Uso. That kid got himself over big time, so proud of him. The guy I put my money on right now, the guy that’s not in that mix – he made a bit of a statement at WrestleMania, I think you’re gonna see big things from Karrion Kross, because this cat, he’s a shooter man. He is a brown belt Jiu Jitsu. He can go for that arm bar where he breaks arms and breaks two baseball bats.  I mean, this cat is the real deal. He’s every bit of 6 ‘4, 6 ‘5 in 280lbs, and has a gorgeous wife who’s so entertaining. You really don’t often see where someone’s as entertaining in front of the camera as he is in the back. Like, have you ever seen Karrion do Jesse Ventura. Oh my God. When you get done with this podcast, who’s ever watching, pull up Karrion Kross Vs Jesse Ventura. LA Knight. La Knight would’ve freaking killed it.  And I’ll tell you, as crazy as that sounds, man, Logan Paul would’ve. This kid, he has no right to be that good. Now, he does have an incredible instructor and Shane Hurricane Helms. Because Shane, he can really teach someone how to be in that ring. There’s very few people who have real heat. He has real heat and it’s not turn to channel heat. It’s where you wanna see him get his ass whooped heat, and it’s pretty damn amazing and frustrating if you’re someone like you just cut a promo on, Karrion Cross. You know when a kid comes like this and gets pushed to the moon, I’ve been busting my ass for 20 years, so that’s hard to watch. It would be hard for me to watch too, if I was there working at that time. But the son of a bitch delivers man. 

A: Opportunity. The damn opportunity and just let him be himself because the cat’s real, you know, and he can work his ass off. It’s not like he’s some big guy who doesn’t know how to kick and doesn’t know how to throw a punch or doesn’t know how to work. He just does all of it at its highest level. That interview that he did that lit shit up and I’m hoping something comes out of that for him. It was like LA Night. Same thing. Both of those guys, they’re 20 years in each. They’ve been doing this a long time and it’s easy to build some strong promos.  If you go back and look at me when I wanted to work with Benoit and Raven, and the reason why I wanted to work with both those guys was to bring them up because man, both of those cats were great. You’ll see me in the crowd cutting a promo. They say, I’d never be a top guy. They said I’d never be a main eventer. They were wrong. I was talking to the booking committee. You just take where that real energy comes from and just push it somewhere else. You didn’t know I was talking to the booking committee at the time.

I did. So that’s why it was real to me. And that’s what you do as an actor. Being a wrestler should be called an artist more than anything because we’re taking you into a world that no other entertainer can do, meaning actor. Sure you might be able to go to the same play every night and hit the same marks with the same intensity, not change it all up and become a different character tomorrow night. And then a different character tomorrow. And let them see how good you are. 

 

A: Made me work harder. Eric Bischoff, when he inducted me into the Hall of Fame, I just recently watched it because I was gonna be inducting Lex into the Hall of Fame. 

So I just wanted to go back, ’cause I thought Eric’s induction at the time was unbelievable. And at one point he said a lot of people think that he got to where he was because of me, meaning him. He said nothing could be farther from the truth. He said, if anything, it made him work twice as hard. No, it didn’t. It made me work five times harder. Because he wouldn’t give me that opportunity. The guys who got me that opportunity were the relationships that I formed with Scott Hall, with Kevin Nash, with Randy Savage, with Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan walked up to me in Berlin 19 November of 1994. And I walked through the curtain. I just got done wrestling Jim Duggan. I was the curtain jerker because that’s my spot. If I’m on the road, I’m coming out number one or number two, and walk through the curtain. Hulk grabbed me and he pulled me over and he said, “how are you doing it?” We’re doing well. What I do wrong, he goes, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”

He goes, “how are you getting so much better?” And he goes, “this is what they’re doing with you, right”. He asked the question and answered the question for me. He goes, “they’re putting you on the road so that you can learn your craft”. And I said, uh, no, this is the first time I’ve been on the road in four months. I said, the only reason I’m on this tour is ’cause my last name is really Falkenberg and the Krauts love their Germans. And I got a smoking hot wife who walks me to the ring. And he goes, “well, how are you doing it then, because I see on tv, but it’s only once in a while”. He goes, “but every time I see you, you’ve got something that connects you with the people. You got some new moves”. 

I said, well, Hulk, I go to the Power Plant every day. He’s like, what’s that? Because Hulk came from, you work a territory, then you work a territory, you work a territory. And then they say, oh, give this kid a push. He’s really got something. They don’t have the territory now. They had the Power Plant. WWE has the performance center. So that’s where you learn. And I learned finally, the more you help teach guys who know, but don’t really know yet, the more you help teach, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get. And he goes, “whatever it is, keep doing it because it’s not today or tomorrow, or next week or next year or the year after, he said, but somewhere down the line, I see you drawing big money with me. You have that potential”. And as I was leaving that night, Hulk called me into his locker room and said the same shit to Bischoff. Now, it never turned into anything. But at least he said it, and it gave me another thing to hold onto that was going to make it so that I literally could maybe get to that next level.

First of all, the first guy to believe in me was a guy named Jody Hamilton. He was the guy who ran the Power Plant. He was the Assassin, the Assassin#1. The next was Dusty Rhodes, but not as a wrestler. He didn’t believe in that. He believed in me as a producer or a character. The first guy to believe in me as a wrestler besides Jody was Jake Snake Roberts. I tore my rotator cuff, they let me go. A year later, Bishoff brought me back and for the same shit money that I was making when I left. So Dusty was down at the Power Plant that day before our meeting. I hadn’t seen him in about five months. He was like, “Hey, Dave, gimme a big hug” And he goes, “aren’t we seeing each other tomorrow?” I go, yeah. He goes, “do me a favor, jump in the ring with this kid. I wanna see what he’s got.” He was looking at some kid who was getting trialled but he was watching him and then, oh, that’s good. 20 minutes later, I thought he left, but he didn’t leave. He went in the back and watched on all the monitors. He saw what I was doing, and the next day when I came there, talk about how I’m gonna be coming back and what my idea was. And he said, “Dee, I know you are with yourself as this top performer in our business, and I gotta be honest with you, D, I never saw it until yesterday.” And then he believed. He goes, “I don’t know how you got as far as you did in a year, but if you keep doing what you are doing, keep doing it”. And that was the thing I got from everybody and I was ready to quit. If Bischoff did not take the NWO idea of me dropping them, I was out and my life would’ve been completely different.

I was super tight with Triple H. I was tight with frigging with Mick Foley, with Steve Austin. I had people up there too and a lot of people will think it’s all about who you know or who knows you, but the reality is. It’s all about who’s willing to say they know you, who’s willing to put their name on the line for you. And I have those relationships. I still have all of them today. 

A: I think, for me, Diamond Dallas Page was just a little bit of the American dream. He’s a little bit of Savage. He’s a little bit of Terry Funk. He’s a lot of Jake, the Snake Roberts, they all make one DDP. The guys who I see who have come up, who really took the crowd the way I did, and I think they took it even further, either Bryan Danielson back when he was Daniel Bryan, back when he was in WWE. Jey Uso, when he got that YEET shit over man.

The movement. People wanna move. Like he’s one of them. That’s the way I was brought in. Sammy Zayn. It’s that same thing. LA Knight has that same thing. These are guys that have been in the business a long time. Look at Jey Uso. He’s gotta have been in the business 20 fu**ing years. He’s just stepping out, but he got jettisoned out. He can’t do anything wrong right now, and he brings that energy. And Jimmy can be the same thing. I don’t know if he’ll ever get that shot yet, but I always thought both of those Uso guys, they had it. And the whole Roman thing when they were the bloodline was just the three of them.

Man, you saw it. Of course, Roman’s a Greek God, he’s gotta be right up there for one of the most handsome sons of a bitches ever to be in the business who knows the same pain that John Cena knows of being loved and hated at the same time. And for what reason? The guy was killing it. Both of ’em. They both killed it.  I’m really interested to see where this whole Cena thing goes, because the more he pushes them away, the more they love him because now they look back and say, “wow, this guy really did put this company on his back for well over a decade, and did it really well.” He says “you say I can’t wrestle”. Yeah, he can wrestle his ass off. He can work his ass off. All those guys, all those. That next level icon like that, that is above that level that I got to. I got to live the dream on its highest level. But then there’s the Austins, there’s the Romans, there’re the Cena’s, the ‘Takers, Sean Michaels, the Stings, the Flairs. Goldberg. Goldberg for sure. 

I was so happy just to live in that spot. Kevin Nash, f**king Kevin Nash has gotta go down as one of the best big men ever. Guys who really made a difference in the business. Scott Hall’s right there with him as well. Because he’s the one who came out there and really changed the playing field. And when you think about Kev coming in and just two guys running over everybody for six months, that’s booking like you really want to start a war. You know what I mean?

A: Oh my God. I would have to take a lot of thought, to be perfectly honest. No, because I wouldn’t just throw that out there because it’s something that might change three times in between now and then.

A: It’s so funny ’cause I rarely wanna know. I might make a little pick. It’s kind of like Who-Dun-It and you can keep changing your pick on those mystery shows because I keep throwing you swerves. That’s what professional wrestling is. Just when you think, you know. You don’t.

Sometimes you gotta give the people what they want. You gotta give ’em what they want and Jey Uso they wanted. And Gunther is one of the best heels. He can go in any and every era. He would be one of the best heels and could be hell of a baby-face at some point for sure. But you could see a Pat McAfee, this is one of these cats that gets to live the dream, loves wrestling, maybe the biggest star on ESPN right now. If he’s not, I’m surprised. Steven A, you know, he is a pretty big star too, but frigging Pat man, he controls his own deal and then he gets to work occasionally. He loves and respects the business too. So that’s super cool. I’ll be really interested in some of the matches that they called out. 

A: Now wait a second. Let me ask you though, did you not feel the crowd when Mysterio went over? Did you not feel the entire crowd turning him babyface? They loved it. I was there in the front row live and they loved it.  Like the kid’s gonna be a hell of a babyface when he makes that flip. Hold onto that heel thing as long as you can, because when he flips, I’ll tell you what that’s a kid I’m a big fan of. We both have the same birthday. I love his old man. But I am personally a big fan of how hard he’s worked to get to this spot. I don’t know many young kids who could have come in the way he did with his dad, not really know how to work at all, and has turned himself, man. Whoever was in charge of making that happen, they are a king maker because that kid, he has got it all and some. It was interesting because he’s the biggest heel, and yet at that last WrestleMania, boy you swear to God he was the biggest baby face of the company.