Diamond Dallas Page recently spoke with SportBible about his upcoming United Kingdom tour; you can read a few highlights below:
Diamond Dallas Page comments on what to take from his upcoming appearances:
“The q and a, which I like to think more as a spoken word because I’ll get up and talk for a little bit which will open up way more questions and that’s really economically priced – I think it’s like 22 pounds. Anybody can come and see that. If you saw my Hall of Fame induction speech, I’m a storyteller – I want to make you laugh, I want to maybe even make you get choked up at times and there were times during that speech [at the Hall of Fame] when I made people flat out cry.
“The bottom line is people are going to be entertained. My goal is that there are people who walk out of there believing they can do something like that because so many people don’t believe in themselves, they don’t have self-confidence – they tear themselves down. One of my goals is for people to walk out of there feeling completely the opposite. And of course if they do the meet and greet part, there’s pictures, autographs and all that as well.”
DDP recalls Hulk Hogan praising him early on in his career:
“Hulk had just come into the company [WCW]. I really don’t remember what city we were in but I finished my match and I walked through the curtain. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me over, and said, ‘how you doing it?’ I said, ‘doing what, Hulk? what am I doing wrong?’ and he goes, ‘no, you’re not doing anything wrong – how are you getting so much better?’ and I was shocked. This is like 94′, maybe 95 and he said, ‘I’ve been watching you and this is what they’re doing with you – putting you on the road like this and it’s helping you learn your craft”. And I was like ‘no, this is my first road show in three or four months’. He’s like, ‘how are you getting so much better then?’ and I told him I went down to the powerplant, started training the young guys because they weren’t doing anything with me.
I figured out the more you teach someone, the more you learn and the better you get. He [Hogan] didn’t really get that because he grew up going from one federation to another; you might go from Georgia to Kansas City, to New York. He said, ‘whatever you’re doing, you need to keep doing it because if it’s not this year or next year, or the year after, somewhere down the line you have the ability to draw huge money with me’ and he walked away. If you look four years later, he’s sitting on ‘The Tonight Show’ with Jay Leno and Dennis Rodman, and me and [Karl] Malone come out from the wings, throw the chairs on the ground, throw the Diamond Cutter sign and shoot our angle not in a wrestling studio, on the world stage on ‘The Tonight Show’. You talk about manifesting a dream into a reality. And it all started in England, somewhere!
DDP comments on Drew McIntyre getting him interested in UK wrestling:
“Now it really is becoming ‘World Wrestling Entertainment’ – it’s the world because you’re getting guys from all over. Drew McIntyre, when I saw him in WWE, as handsome as he is, as big as he is, he was just too young at the time to have that all dropped on him. But now, to me, he’s one of the best. I would say you’ve got to have the look, the wrap – he could talk, and you’ve got to have the work and he was amazing. Him coming in there, and again coming out of the UK, he was the first one that made me go ‘wow, what are those guys doing over there [in the UK]’.
“It made me want to know more about this thing over there and to see what’s been happening, with guys like Neville and others – these are all products of the UK. Then when I saw they were doing the UK tournament and some of these kids they are bringing in, the UK fans have got to be pretty proud right now because they are seeing a lot of great guys who are cutting their teeth right there and it blows my mind. I love it, man. It gives some of the guys from our country, too, a place to go. I know Cody Hall’s gone over there a couple of times and that’s how you get good – wrestling with guys who can can actually wrestle.”
