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CANOE -- SLAM! Sports - Wrestling - Dallas Page continues to shine like a diamond
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CANOE -- SLAM! Sports - Wrestling - Dallas Page continues to shine like a diamond
Dallas Page continues to shine like a diamond
By JAN MURPHY - Kingston Whig-Standard
To call Diamond Dallas Page an inspiration is akin to calling Michael Jordan a good baskeball player or Wayne Gretzky a solid hockey player.
Consider:
The man, whose wrestling career spanned more than two decades, didn't actually break into the wrestling part of his career until he was 35, when most professional wrestlers are either retired or long past their primes.
Then again, DDP isn't "most pro wrestlers."
Page would only go on to become a three-time World Championship Wrestling (WCW) World Heavyweight Champion, two-time WCW United States Heavyweight Champion, four-time WCW World Tag Team Champion and WCW World Television Champion. He was the fourth WCW Triple Crown Champion. Before hanging up his boots, he would enjoy a short but successful run with WWE Inc. that included runs as a European and Tag-team champion.
DDP broke into the business in the late 1980s as a manager in the American Wrestling Association. But it was later in life before he caught his big break with WCW.
"I was trained by Jody Hamilton," Page said during a telephone interview when asked about his path to eventual superstardom. "I always say that without Dusty Rhodes, there is no Diamond Dallas Page," he said, referring to the legendary WWE Hall of Fame superstar. "He's the one that gave me my first break in Florida and in WCW. He's been a mentor and a friend to me. He's still one of my closest friends. When I got down to WCW, Jody Hamilton ran the Power Plant," a WCW training centre. "Do you remember The Assassins?" Page asked, referring to the 1960s tag team on which Hamilton was Assassin #1.
It was another former megastar who would help Page hone his skills as pro wrestler. The legendary Jake "The Snake" Roberts took Page under his wing, teaching him the important role psychology played in becoming a successful pro wrestler. It was while working under Roberts that the pair become friends. Lifelong friends, in fact. It's a friendship that endures to this day. More on that later.
Looking back, even Page himself acknowledges how unique his situation was.
"The average length of an NFL player's (career) is three years," he said. "Sure, there are guys that have (played) 17 years, (but) the average is still three. In wrestling, all the guys you've ever seen on TV, probably the average is about four years.
"Coming in so late ... the reason I started as a manager was because I was ... almost 32. I thought I was way too old to start to really learn how to wrestle. The opportunity in WCW, I jumped. I left the nightclub I owned a piece of to follow the dream," DDP said adding "when you start at 35 and a half, they laugh at you. I mean, Michael 'PS' Hayes, in my last match as a manager, we were in Chatanooga, I will never forget it. I was about to go through the curtain. He said, 'I heard this is our last match with you as our manager,' and I said, 'Yeah. I'm going down to the Power Plant ... I'm gonna learn how to wrestle.' Hayes fell down laughing. Literally fell down."
It was not all smooth sailing, however.
"I started at 35 and a half, tore my left rotator cuff, they fired me, and then I came back at 37."
If DDP owes some of his success to Roberts, he has repaid it in spades, having taken Roberts in during his darkest hour and most recently helping Roberts get back into shape with his DDP Yoga. More on that shortly.
"Our relationship, when we were on the road ... we had each other for support and all that s--t," DDP said of his friendship with Roberts. "(I was) sitting home with a torn rotator cuff, and the company is letting me go and Jake called me up to see how I was doing."
Later, when Page learned his friend was living out of a hotel, he would return the kindness shown to him.
"I went by and saw him, and I was still with (Page's ex-wife) Kimberly; I was still married to her. And I said, 'Hey, what if Jake comes and stays with us until he can find his own place? You know, for a couple of weeks?' She was like, 'OK.' I figured I (could) learn a lot from him. I can help him, he can help me. But long story short, we lived together for three months, and the only reason we didn't live together after that was because (Roberts' pet snake) stayed in my house," and went missing. "Kim was like, 'He's got to go!'" Page recalled, laughing.
It's a friendship that has never looked back.
"We're like kindred brothers, to a certain extent, but he really helped me with the psychology of wrestling," Page said. "Anybody who really understands what wrestling is ... it's like telling a story, a match. And Jake could tell it verbally, and physically. He taught me a lot. (Again),I would say there is no Diamand Dallas Page without Dusty Rhodes, but there is no guy that becomes a three-time world champion without Jake Roberts."
Page was not only successful inside the ring, he was one of the best outside of it. He could -- and still can -- bring an audience to its feat with seeming ease.
So it comes as little surprise that following his retirement at the mind-boggling age of 53, Page continues to succeed, and inspire; this time helping others with his DDP Yoga, which, for the record, is not to be called anything but.
"Don't ever call my stuff yoga," Page said, politely. "It's DDP Yoga. Yoga puts you in a block ... in a box. You know, everybody thinks they know what yoga is. Just like bikram yoga, have you ever heard of that?" he asked, to which I replied I had.
"If I had just called it yoga, would you have known it was bikram?"
No, I replied.
Page's yoga past traces back to a time when he was home, with an injured back, when he spotted his then wife emerging from their basement, dripping with sweat.
"She was doing power yoga," he said. "I'm the guy that wouldn't be caught dead doing yoga the first 42 years of my life ... like most guys," DDP said, before explaining what led to his being home that fateful day.
"I had a crazy, rigorous schedule for years," he said. "I was doing movies, I was doing The Tonight Show ... I was doing everything ... not enough sleeping, and going really hard. I was in a match (when former WWE superstar Kevin) Nash power bombed me. Man, I thought I broke my back. I mean, I had never felt that kind of pain. I've torn some big s--t in my body, but, you know, I thought I was done. Your back is the centre of the universe, man, cause you can't do s--t. I had three doctors tell me my career was over.
"So I'm home, crashed out, and Kimberly is coming up from downstairs, soaking wet. And I'm like, 'What are you doing down there?'" he recalled, wondering at that time if the heat was cranked up too high in their basement. "It was that power yoga tape. I was like, 'Really? You're sweating like that?' She was like, 'You should try to do it babe, it'll help heal your body.' And I was like, 'Yeah ... right ... f--k that! I'll never do yoga!' So any guy who says that ... I get that," Page admits now.
He was right in one sense, he's not doing yoga. He's doing DDP Yoga, as you'll recall.
Put simply, and according to Page's DDP Yoga website (Shopping Cart Software & Ecommerce Software Solutions by CS-Cart), DDP Yoga is "a hybrid workout that incorporates some traditional yoga positions and adds dynamic resistance, active breathing techniques and power movements to make for a more challenging and results oriented workout that anyone can do."
A mere 534,238 people had liked Page's website through Facebook as this column was being written. Another 40,000 people follow DDP Yoga (Twitter: @DDPYoga) on Twitter.
Forget the sheer numbers for a moment. It's the success stories that count. And there are many.
Some include many of DDP's former wrestling colleagues, including Canadians Adam (Edge) Copeland and Chris Jericho, as well as Kingston Whig-Standard columnist Tommy Dreamer, to name some.
Even many current wrestlers use it, such names as Goldust, Ryback, Zack Ryder and Kane, to name some.
Jericho recently returned to the WWE in the best shape of his life, something he credits to DDP Yoga.
"I was so proud, and humbled by how Chris talks about the workout," Page said. "It helped him get his career back.
Few success stories tug at the heartstrings quite like that of Arthur Boorman, a disabled veteran of the Persian Gulf War, who weighed nearly 300 pounds and walked with the aid of crutches and leg braces when he embarked on the DDP Yoga journey. Boorman lost 140 pounds in the first 10 months of using DDP Yoga and now walks unaided.
If Boorman's success story isn't enough, then consider DDP's current project, the transformation of his longtime friend Roberts, whose well documented struggles with drugs and alcohol left him looking old and haggered, to put it mildly.
"The whole thing with Jake ... going down there to Texas ... before I went there you know, a lot of people said 'Can you please help Scott Hall?' 'Please help Buff Bagwell ...' and I'm like 'They've gotta reach out' you know, because I don't want to come to them and say, 'Okay, now you're going to do this, this and that.' That's not what I do. Like for Jake Roberts, we had a real bond. And I had bonds with both of those other guys, too. But with Jake, it finally got to the point where he's like, 'Now I'm ready to listen.' And I showed him the program. And I said, 'Just do the eating plan, dude. Just do the Phase 3 eating plan, for frigging one week, and in 10 days, I'll call you back, and if you do it, if you can lose eight to 10 pounds, cause I know if you're doing what I tell you to, you will, then we'll talk about another big idea I have for you, that will also make you money, as well as heal your body.' And, he was like, 'Okay, I'll give it a shot.' In 10 days, he lost eight or nine pounds."
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