Dallas Diamond Page is a former professional wrestler, former UFC Hall of Fame wrestler, and now a yoga teacher and founder of Power Yoga Los Angeles. He has been in the business for over 40 years and has been through a lot in that time. In this episode, we talk about how he got back in the ring, his injuries, and how he managed to get back on the mat at a very young age. He also talks about why he decided to go back into the business and what it took for him to make it to where he is today, and why he thinks yoga is the best thing he s ever done in his life. It s a great episode and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it to the end of this episode. Thank you so much to Dallas Diamond Page for coming on the show and talking about all things pro wrestling, yoga, and life in general. He is truly a legend and I can t wait for you to listen to this one! XOXOXO - The Top 10 Podcasts of the Decade - The Guys Who Couldn t Stop Talking About Pro Wrestling - The New York Times Best Podcasts - The Inside Scoop - The Internet's Top 10 Most Influential Wrestlers of All Time - The Realest Wrestlers in the World - The Most Beautiful People in the Business - The Fastest Athlete of Their Day to Day - The Biggest Athlete Of Their Day To See Them All Overcome Their Worst Accomplishment in Their Life - The Ultimate Athlete - The Man Who Has It All - The Hardest Thing They've Ever Has Ever Done It - The Greatest Athlete Who Has Ever Had It All? - The Best Athlete Has Never Had It Like That? - And So Much More! - And They Don t Care About It - And He Ain t Got It? - And He Can Do It? - And His Story Will Have It, And He Will Never Hurt You, And They Will Never Stop Doing It, and He Will Ever Do It, Too... And He Won t Stop Saying It... And They Won t Hear It, So He Can TOTALLY Do It Again - And It's Not Hear It And He'll Have It And They'll Never Say It, But He Won't Hear It & He Won T Think It And Will Never Hear It Again, And It Won t Get It And It Will Never Do It & They Will Hear It and More!
00:01:19.000You're into yoga, and you're really, really into it.
00:01:23.000I mean, you've got your own system of yoga.
00:01:25.000I mean, this is for something that I think is very important for body maintenance and for keeping your spine healthy and mobility, which is one of the things that a lot of us ignore, especially big guys who like to lift weights.
00:01:52.000And my career didn't take off until I was 40. How old are you now?
00:01:55.00062. Dude, if you folks saw what he just did with no warm-up, no warm-up, bent over, grabbed your ankles, fully flattened your body out, pressed your body up against your thighs with no warm-up, then he picks his ankle up and fully extends his leg over his head.
00:02:14.000I mean, that is incredibly impressive for a 20-year-old person.
00:02:17.000Well, it's all about staying ahead of it.
00:02:22.000Going back to, you know, just my career, I mean, my career took off in 96, which was, I was 40 years old.
00:02:29.00097 and 98, man, I was on top of the world.
00:02:33.000Wrestling 270 days a year, every year.
00:02:39.000And then I did The Tonight Show, Hollywood Squares, a movie called First Daughter was my first movie I did.
00:02:45.000So, I mean, I was probably working 300 and...
00:02:48.00020 days a year and the wear and tear on your body after a while like boom I took a power slam from or a powerbomb from Kevin Nash Kevin's legit 610 long way down and it wasn't that bump that blew my back out it was all of it and being almost 43 years old and when I ruptured my L4 and L5 and we have this amazing vertebrae that is what allows us to do all this crazy shit that we do but What really allows us is those shock absorbers,
00:04:40.000But at the time, I was just doing his VHS tapes.
00:04:43.000But for what I wanted, it wasn't giving me everything.
00:04:47.000So what I did, I've rehabbed both shoulder surgeries, both knee surgeries, And I'm kind of like God-given gifts of figuring out how to heal myself.
00:04:59.000I'm the first guy in professional wrestling to ever ice his body by almost a decade, eight years before they would start doing that.
00:05:17.000You know, just different reading on different people and how they healed themselves and what people were saying.
00:05:23.000And what I've found that a lot of people don't want to put the extra work in.
00:05:27.000They could be the hardest workers ever, but they won't go that extra mile just to go get a bag of ice, fill it up, put it on your knees, put an A-span around it, you can go wherever you want.
00:05:37.000Well, that's also like part of the culture of tough guys, right?
00:05:46.000There's something about the same type of guy that's so tough they could work 300 days a year is also the same type of guy that's gonna go, ah, I'll fucking just deal with it.
00:05:56.000And Steve, me and Austin, when I broke in, I was like 35 and a half.
00:06:00.000He's 26. And Austin was always way ahead of the curve as far as talent.
00:06:06.000But he was like, what are you doing, kid?
00:07:01.000The guy was shredded, but that whole time under tension thing, something I call dynamic resistance, I hated that.
00:07:08.000And like for the push-ups, you know, I would lower for three, hold three inches off the ground for three, come up for three, Lower for three, hold for three.
00:07:19.000Then I'd go into Cobra and a down dog.
00:07:21.000And in the beginning, I had to do them on my knees.
00:07:24.000But then I built that strength to get off my knees.
00:07:27.000And then three-second push-ups became five.
00:08:20.000I do shit like when you take into a lunge and you throw your arms up, I go, superstar!
00:08:27.000You know, when we're in like a lunge that we're folding forward and we're to explode into touchdown, I'd say throw a little Ric Flair on the end of that.
00:10:26.000So when that kind of attention comes to wrestling, more people are going to be like, oh, I want to get involved in that.
00:10:34.000And plus, Vince really has taken it mainstream at a different level.
00:10:38.000Like back when we were killing it in the 90s, I mean, we had the highest rated show on cable television, whether it was WCW or WWF. Every week, we were one, two, and three, sometimes one, two, three, and four, top four shows.
00:10:50.000But our dollars that we could get for the advertising...
00:10:54.000Was nothing like they're getting today because they made it kids friendly.
00:10:58.000They changed that and it was brilliant by Vince.
00:11:00.000You know, it really changed format, but today it's about to go through another boom and this whole independent thing that Cody and these young bucks who are great kids did.
00:12:07.000I mean, it's crazy to think that you're getting body slammed and thrown into the ropes and forearms slammed and all that shit's going on 300 days a year.
00:13:41.000He wrestles like he's 28. He's been doing my program since he did the same thing I did when he blew his back out and three doctors said he was not going to wrestle anymore.
00:14:11.000And when I wake up, my first 10 minutes, I call it wake up.
00:14:15.000Man, I call it oil for the tin man and woman.
00:14:19.000And the real proof of this for me, because I'm the first transformation, The bottom line is, they said my career was over when I was 42. I started doing what now is called DDPY. Three months, less than three months later,
00:15:04.000Like, this is what this business is supposed to be.
00:15:07.000That someone like you, who no one would believe would ever be anyone...
00:15:12.000Could work so hard that they would become the world champ.
00:15:16.000When I got my Hall of Fame ring in 2017, inside I had inscribed in here, work ethic equals dreams, explanation point, DDP. And that's what it is.
00:15:36.000Now, you know, I don't have any, I don't, if I don't do it, if I'm on too many planes, trains, and automobiles, you know, then I'm going to get released.
00:15:47.000Like, I'd say to my wife, and I swear to God, because every morning I do, I roll out of bed some nights and you feel like you get hit by a truck.
00:16:36.000But, you know, it's just, for me, it's, as you know this, repetition is the mother of learning.
00:16:43.000The more you do something, the more you own it.
00:16:45.000And on that clip, I want to show you something I brought with me because I've been waiting for For your show to release this, I've got a new book coming out.
00:18:32.000On that note, Jake the Snake Roberts is working a deal right now with Hooters in Vegas, and they're talking about giving him a room, and he will do Monday Night Raw.
00:18:46.000Somebody contacted me about him as well.
00:18:48.000Someone from his organization contacted me.
00:18:52.000And I saw some sort of a program on television where it was detailing you helping him get clean and you getting him involved in yoga.
00:19:00.000What you're doing is really fucking awesome because you're exposing something that I think should be It just should be something that everybody does.
00:19:09.000I just really think that all athletes, all people, I think yoga is a life staple.
00:19:17.000When I got through this, when I got through wrestling, I could have easily stepped into that yoga community and went the whole Namaste route.
00:27:54.000And that's really, like, it was crazy because, again, anybody who got my program 11 years ago, I, personally, there was no one else but me, I would send them an email saying, hey, man, I'm not trying to sell you anything.
00:28:07.000You already bought the program, and I want to say thank you, and I got a couple questions.
00:28:11.000If you would answer them, I'd appreciate it.
00:28:42.000I don't know how I can help him because not so much the knee braces.
00:28:45.000Hell, I wore knee braces my whole career.
00:28:47.000I didn't realize it was strapped to a back brace and his wife, 20 minutes every morning, got to put her on the sleeve, put on the brace because he can't even bend over enough to do it.
00:30:25.000But I know when I get people to eat what God created and stuff that's not genetically modified, I found that they get out of pain, and that's what I did with Jake and Scott.
00:30:36.000You know, Razor Ramon also moved into my house, and when you get a chance to watch, before you have Jake come on, definitely watch The Resurrection of Jake the Snake, because I can set you up with that too.
00:30:45.000But Jake, I got him eating real food, and Scott Hall, aka Razor Ramon, eating real food.
00:30:53.000And within two weeks, they're already going to start getting out of pain.
00:31:00.000Because I don't want to feel like I'm 82. I want to feel like I'm 42 at 62. Now when you talk about your food plan, are you giving them specific portions and what to eat?
00:34:10.000That guy, I mean, two canes, giant belly, blown out knees, blown out back, veteran paratrooper, guy, I mean, jumping out of fucking airplanes over and over again, blows his body apart, and you fixed it.
00:35:36.000The main thing I talked to him in that conversation, which is, again, what Positively Unstoppable is all about, As important as the workout is, as important as the eating plan is, that 10% of the equation, the 90% is right between your ears.
00:35:52.000Right here, that six inch piece of real estate, the story you tell yourself.
00:35:56.000And I said, if you can really just get past that story and start re- Telling yourself a different story.
00:36:04.000An example would be when I went for my whole theme, induction speech, in front of 20,000 people and millions of people on USA and on the WWE Network, which is only $9.99, by the way.
00:38:26.000I try to get them to cut down as much as they can.
00:38:29.000Some people quit completely, which blows my mind, which tells me they really have that substance.
00:38:34.000My friend Stacy Morris, who lost 180 pounds in 18 months, she's actually on the cover of Women's Day right now, that big magazine for Women's Day of her transformation.
00:38:44.000She wrote a book on it, like something comfort, eating comfort or family comfort.
00:40:15.000When you get that out of your body, In two and a half, three weeks, it's a different level.
00:40:21.000You already feel better, you feel better, but it's got to get out of your body.
00:40:25.000And then if you put it back in, here and there, you're going to feel it, but it's going to go way quicker because it doesn't have all that shit stored in your body.
00:40:32.000Well, it also reminds me how shitty I feel after I eat it.
00:40:35.000When I do eat a pizza, I'm just like, oh, laying on the couch like a lead weight to my stomach.
00:40:41.000But what I substituted with is spaghetti squash.
00:44:51.000I mean, it's one of those things where it's just, unfortunately or fortunately, there's just so many different requests for people to come on the podcast.
00:45:38.000He said he's definitely doing something different.
00:45:39.000His take was, he's like, he's doing yoga, but he's got a whole other edge to it.
00:45:45.000Yeah, and I keep, again, making it my own, and I encourage everybody.
00:45:49.000What's really cool about, I've got some workouts that have me and like two people or four people behind me, and they're like the introductory.
00:47:55.000I had to sell them all when I was poor.
00:47:57.000I had all these comic books that I collected from the time I was a little kid, and then when I became a stand-up comedian and I was starving in the early days, I sold all my comic books and just...
00:54:16.000And now, Mark went from having trouble getting booked at high schools to being in such demand that he had 3,000 requests the month that that video went crazy.
00:54:26.000And people keep taking it and putting it out there.
00:56:27.000It confuses the shit out of a lot of people.
00:56:29.000Fortunately for you, you were already a man.
00:56:30.000Right, and that was the big difference.
00:56:32.000I have to say, starting at 35 was the worst thing physically, because one of my matches, or any of these kids, it's like four or five car accidents.
00:58:34.000He don't look like, you know, you see Herschel Walker without his shirt off, you go, Jesus fucking Christ, what lab was that guy creating in?
01:02:29.000And there's something I'm about to do off of my app that's going to be...
01:02:33.000Life-changing for a lot of those guys.
01:02:35.000I just don't have it all put together yet, but it's one of the things that I'm working on right now because I want to be able to give back to help them.
01:02:46.000I just did one with Ma Deuce Deuce in New Jersey, where I'm from.
01:02:52.000I live in Point Pleasant, Bricktown's the next town over.
01:02:54.000I went over there and I did one for the guys there.
01:02:58.000I had like 75 guys there and guys in their families.
01:03:03.000Every one of those to say well that's I've given the app you know because I just want you to do it because if you do it You're gonna feel better.
01:03:11.000I don't know how much better How much work are you gonna put in you know, it all comes down to the work ethic like where you are how much work you put in where can you get right and where it I my program Meet you where you are.
01:03:25.000And that's the whole thing with Jerry.
01:03:29.000The last episode, I don't want to tell you what happened because I know eventually you'll get around to it and you're going to be like, wow, this fucking shit's crazy.
01:03:35.000And to answer your question on the back, all I can think of I'm constantly lengthening and strengthening.
01:03:43.000I stretched my whole wrestling, my whole athletic career, right up until I was 42 and three quarters when I blew my back out.
01:04:19.000That's what I'm doing when I had you flex your quads, flex your glutes, grab the ball, open those fingers wide, move with resistance.
01:04:25.000I guarantee you your heart rate, if you started at 80, 80. It went to 105, 115, 120. I can take my heart rate from 90 to 140, well, 135, like that.
01:04:37.000And I mean two minutes, standing still.
01:05:38.000I've never done it, but I've heard amazing things from UFC guys that have fought and had pretty significant injuries, hand breaks, muscle damage, and had some pretty rapid recovery because of it.
01:05:52.000My doctor, who she's my endocrinologist, when I told her I was doing it, she goes, I can tell you, I know it can only help you.
01:06:01.000She goes, the only story I have about it, because I don't know enough about it, she said, I had a woman who had radiation therapy, so she had an open wound from her breast cancer, and it wouldn't close for over two years.
01:06:14.000Send her down to Emory finally, put her in a hyperbaric chamber.
01:06:19.000Same things happens with people with diabetes.
01:06:22.000So I had heard like LeBron had it, you know, because I never saw an article on it, but I just heard some people talking about it, you know, in different areas, that he had one, Kobe had one.
01:07:02.000And you got to be accountable for everything.
01:07:05.000And the thing, I loved that home, but it was 22 steps, you know, to get to my bedroom, and my knees are bone on bone.
01:07:13.000So going down was a drag, so I figured, fuck it, I'm going to buy a new home, master on Main, and I'm going to build this, you know, I have this place that I can bring in top-end athletes that want to be healed.
01:07:25.000You know, so going back to the crib, I'm making that like an Airbnb now, and I'll have like the Jake the Snake Roberts suite, the Rachel Ramone suite, the DDP suite.
01:08:09.00020 would be like 8 pounds per square inch.
01:08:12.000At 12 pounds per square inch, The pressure is there and it takes like 10 minutes to get up there, like you're blowing your nose, like just get in the air, fix your ears and all that shit.
01:08:26.000But what happens when you get to 12 psi, now it breaks the brain barrier and the oxygen will go to your brain.
01:08:34.000So this is, I didn't know any of this shit till I sit next to a guy named Brad Campbell, who's like an angel, this cat.
01:09:34.000Hence the cane, the walker, the chair.
01:09:40.000So, what somebody, I don't know who the person was, who figured out 20 days in a chamber, and it's all about consistency.
01:09:49.000You do it once or twice, you're going to feel better a little bit.
01:09:53.000But when you do it like consistent, like 20 days, like they do there, take off five days, you do that four times.
01:10:01.000You do your MRI on your brain before you start and after there's a kid named Daniel Bryan who is one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling and a couple years ago he had to retire at the height of his career and he was the hottest guy on the planet at the time and he wasn't a big guy but he was the number one guy in the business.
01:10:21.000And he had to retire because of concussions.
01:15:38.000Yeah, no, you can't control that at all.
01:15:39.000So the guys who had those runs, they're pretty banged up.
01:15:41.000And the other guys, I've just started, you know, I'm talking to Bart Oates, who is the president of the NFL Alumni.
01:15:48.000And we've been talking about doing something for the guys.
01:15:51.000And again, when I do shit like that, I just give it to them just to help them.
01:15:56.000And I've talked to a few of the players.
01:15:57.000I got a few guys, you know, loving it.
01:15:59.000And so it's just, again, helping them with, because there's, you know, those guys are all weightlifting, running.
01:16:06.000We can't do either now because you're so beat up.
01:16:11.000So, you know, it was funny when we watched it, I know I'm sure you watched the Super Bowl when they had the 50th anniversary a couple years back, and all the MVPs that came out there, just, it was brutal to watch how beat up they are.
01:16:23.000The only guy, of course, Jerry Rice looks like he could still play, you know, because that sort of a bitch is the greatest, he's just a freaking super athlete, and somehow, I don't know with all the crazy shots he's been hit with that he has survived, but there's certain people, I always say they could eat plastic.
01:16:48.000And he was built like a fucking 20-year-old freak of nature, fully shredded, and then...
01:16:53.000You know, I mean, you really have to stop and think, if that guy did fight when he was in his 20s instead of in his 40s, late 40s, he could have been a world champion, and I'm not bullshitting.
01:17:34.000He goes, D, I'm having Walker on the show today.
01:17:37.000He goes, do you want to sit in the wings?
01:17:39.000I'll ask him if he did the diamond cutter or not.
01:17:41.000And I just go, dude, I definitely want to hear that.
01:17:44.000So he put me on the phone in the wings and I'm waiting there.
01:17:46.000And he said, so what happened that day?
01:17:49.000What was that thing you did with the ball?
01:17:52.000He goes, well, you know, I'm a big WCW fan, and I really like Diamond Dallas Page, and I felt the bang, and I just did it and did the bang and everything.
01:17:59.000And he goes, well, he's on the air right now with you.
01:18:07.000What I think you're doing, and what I think one of the best benefits of yoga, and I'm sure the same with DDPY, is that you're connecting everything together, whereas yoga and sprinting and all these explosive exercises, it's building up to muscles, but what you're doing is you're tightening up all the joints.
01:18:24.000You're tightening up the core and the joints.
01:18:26.000And this is the thing that people are missing, that a lot of people are missing that are really into fitness and exercise.
01:18:31.000They're doing all this explosive stuff, but what's connecting everything together is what blows out.
01:18:36.000The knees, the ankles, the shoulders, the back.
01:18:39.000And this is something that's missing from a lot of people's workouts because it's not as glamorous.
01:18:44.000It's not like you do biceps, your thighs get all pumped up, you do chest, you get all pumped up, you look great.
01:18:52.000What you're doing is for overall body maintenance and health and just connecting all these parts together in a way that makes the whole unit stronger and healthier.
01:21:09.000And I never thought women would love the workout the way they do.
01:21:11.000And what was this year that you put this together?
01:21:13.0002005. So I was interviewed by this guy from the Wall Street Journal and literally he quoted me saying when Kimberly had asked me if I would do the yoga.
01:22:06.000I want to heat my body up in the cold.
01:22:09.000So I don't want to put myself in a position where it's so hot that I can go farther than I've ever come before, because then I'm going to walk out into the real world.
01:22:40.000I think he lost, and on top of that, I don't think it was his to begin with.
01:22:44.000I think somebody else had put all those patterns together before him.
01:22:49.000Probably so, because again, it's It's friggin' yoga.
01:22:51.000It's been around for thousands of years.
01:22:53.000But for me, what I do, like, one time Chris Jericho and I were, he came by my house in L.A. when I was living here, and we went out to the park, and he's like, so what do you do?
01:23:03.000Do you stand up one day, you know, strength build it or next?
01:23:06.000I go, Chris, I do it different every...
01:23:09.000I do the same open and do the same close.
01:23:12.000But all the middle, I go, it's like a match, man.
01:23:14.000I'm making it up as I go along at times.
01:23:16.000You know, and I'm improv-ing because I'm seeing what you can do.
01:23:19.000And then I'm going to take it different.
01:23:56.000And I was like, dude, here's what I really feel.
01:24:00.000This shit you're doing is building crazy momentum.
01:24:03.000I go, we're at the top of where we're going to go right now, and it's so cyclical, at some point it's going to fall out.
01:24:10.000I said, it's a whole different thing than what you're doing.
01:24:12.000I know you appreciate it, which I'm super excited about, but bottom line is, man, stay where you are.
01:24:18.000And he's saying this in the SI interview, right?
01:24:21.000So I still had his number, and I called him up, and he answered the phone, like, hey, Dito.
01:24:25.000Like, hey, DDP! I'm like, hey, man, I saw what you said, and you told the story exactly, because I talked him out of it, like trying to go, and told him, no, stay where you are, dude.
01:27:22.000You know, because that guy's whole issue has been really his back.
01:27:26.000I mean, there's other injuries, the shoulders and the knees and stuff like that, but they can fix those better than they can fix your back.
01:27:31.000The back is, once they lose those discs, you know.
01:27:35.000And I told him, like I told you, I said, if you can get out to Atlanta, I'll personally work with you.
01:28:03.000What I found on the internet, there's few things that they really share.
01:28:09.000Like when Steve first did that video, I looked at it and went, man, you don't have, back then it was still, we were just branding it DDP Yoga.
01:28:17.000You don't have ddpyoga.com on it though.
01:28:22.000And in the book, remember, this is 2011. And he said, I read a book that talked about if you want something to go viral, it can't be an advertising ad.
01:28:35.000It has to be, unless it's super funny, then that's different.
01:28:38.000He said, but if you want to, there's two things we can do here.
01:29:05.000Steve is like an Ivy Leaguer, graduated from Cornell, like super smart, was literally on his way to being a top guy at IBM and thought, fuck that.
01:30:06.000So you figured out the chair as a balancing tool.
01:30:09.000And we have some where people are just sitting down and we have like beginner, beginner, but by the time you come into my class, like when I'll do, I'll go do a class and I'll be back to let everybody know Tuesday of next week I will be doing a class at DDP Yoga Performance Center.
01:30:24.000You won't be able to fit enough people in there.
01:30:26.000But there'll be people with chairs and there'll be people without them and the energy will be insane because I've got you counting and you'll see like, grab the ball.
01:30:34.000Now grab a hold and work your back and bys here and pull.
01:32:22.000First time Bruce Springsteen ever sang Dancing in the Dark was caught up with a band called Bystander and sang with them.
01:32:29.000Because, you know, Bruce is down two blocks, one block away was the Stone Pony, where I watched him probably 18 Sundays in a row play with a band called Cats on a Smooth Surface.
01:32:38.000You just jump up and start playing, you know?
01:32:41.000And now how did you go to pro wrestling?
01:34:22.000In the beginning, I didn't get picked up until the end, maybe.
01:34:26.000And then as time went on, over that summer, it kept getting better and better and better and better.
01:34:30.000My freshman year, I started, and we went undefeated.
01:34:33.000My sophomore year, I was playing varsity.
01:34:35.000So I realized that work ethic equals results.
01:34:39.000So that was the huge lesson I learned from that.
01:34:42.000So now I'm 23 years old, and I hurt my knee, and I'm going to take some time off away from the dream of being a wrestler, and I get caught in the booze, the prods, and the party.
01:35:03.000And I was lucky that I had a way of parenting myself, like getting into that whole party scene, which I did, but slowly I kind of backed myself out a little bit each year.
01:35:13.000And I've got this club in Fort Myers, Florida at the time, and this one I actually own a little piece of it with my buddy Tony Cafaro and a couple other guys.
01:35:23.000One night I'm in the office and we had a camera at the back door and a camera at the front door.
01:35:27.000This place would hold, legally, probably about 600 people.
01:40:01.000And when they're doing it, this TV, when I do the radio spot, they're filming me in my car, and ready to do a radio spot, I'm wearing a Wrestlemania t-shirt.
01:40:10.000And I know because I have this footage still.
01:40:12.000And I put it up on my Motivational Mondays for my very first one.
01:50:28.000All those clothes you saw me in, I was wearing that shit in Fort Myers, Florida.
01:50:33.000And I said to my buddy, Kurt Church, who was my head bouncer at the time, my head of the floor, and when this was starting to happen, I go, dude, can you imagine if I ever have a reason to dress like this?
01:50:43.000You know, like, And if anything, I got way more tapered down.
01:50:49.000You know, I wasn't living the gimmick.
01:50:51.000But, man, it was the beginning of everything.
01:50:53.000And then Dusty Rhodes had come into Florida for Florida Championship Wrestling.
01:50:57.000And Dusty took me under his wing, man.
01:50:59.000And he gave me every break that ever meant anything to my career early on.
01:51:04.000That's why it was so important for me.
01:51:06.000To be there for Cody because I'm not getting choked up just thinking about it.
01:51:10.000Without Dusty Rhodes, there is no Diamond Dolls page.
01:51:13.000He gave me every break I ever had and for me to watch his son do what they did last weekend.
01:51:55.000Who really kept it going when he wasn't, because when I'd call up just to check in with Dusty once in a while, she'd say, don't worry, Dallas.
01:52:04.000And knowing how bad he is at calling someone back, I know that, that's why I thank Michelle in my Hall of Fame speech, because I know without her, I don't know if it ever would have kept going the way it did, but Dusty, you know, he brought me in and I managed the Freebirds,
01:52:21.000Michael P.S. Hage and Jimmy Jam Garvin, which was such an education, such a good time.
01:52:25.000Michael's still one of my best friends today.
01:52:27.000And I helped Scott Hall, who was Big Scott Hall, come in, changed his entire look from blonde hair and a big roll with mustache I had him dye his hair jet black and give him this brush cut beard that like nobody had the five o'clock shadow and no one knew who the fuck he was and I brought him in and what is happening as you see all the crazy clothes I wore Well,
01:52:52.000five months in, Magnum TA, who's Dusty's right-hand man, comes up to me and he's like, listen, D, we're going to keep you at the color commentators box.
01:53:02.000I'm also doing color commentating with Eric Bischoff, who would later run the company.
01:53:06.000And he said, we can't let you manage anymore.
01:53:13.000He goes, it's not anything you're doing wrong, bro.
01:53:16.000He goes, with the hair and the wrap and the dolls and those crazy clothes, he goes, you're taking too much attention away from the boys and they're the ones who draw the money.
01:53:27.000And I was like, so fuck, are you telling me, Magnum, that I'm too over the fucking top for wrestling?
01:54:25.000It's a different level of SEAL training.
01:54:27.000You're going to do 50 Hindu squats where you're asked to bucket and up again.
01:54:35.000And then you're going to do 10 push-ups.
01:54:37.000And then you're going to do 50. And then 10. And 50. And 10. And by the time you get to that third 50, if you're not in shape, you're screwed.
01:54:46.000Because we're going to 500. Yeah, Hindu squats are a big thing amongst wrestlers, right?
01:54:51.000It's a great way to get in shape, but it really wears on your knees.
01:56:10.000I want to say it's 2004 because I wrestled until I was 46. Then I took off two and a half years, came here, did the whole acting thing and put my dues and put the work in.
01:56:23.000Now I want to go back and I want to show people what I can do with my DDPY program at 49. So I call up a buddy of mine named Rick Bassman, and he's got the UPW at the time, and he's got the own area, kind of like the power plant was, and the kids are training there whenever.
01:56:38.000I said, do me a favor, send me over one of your boys and let him come by and get me, and I'll do what I want to do, and then I'll help work with him a little bit.
01:59:01.000I can't hear it because I've already seen it.
01:59:03.000She's laughing so hard, but I'm laughing because I'm watching it and I know what they're saying or an idea of it, but when you got visual comedy, which you know, when you don't hear the words and you're watching like Buster Keaton and you're laughing, that's really good shit.
01:59:19.000And it's super funny and seeing it killed it.
01:59:23.000So, you know, he's a super A-list actor now.
01:59:26.000He just did a Ferdinand movie and I mean, he's on fire.
01:59:30.000Last time I saw him at the show, I just pulled him over for a second.
01:59:34.000I don't really know him that well, but I wanted him to know that I was so proud of him, not for what he's done as an actor, even though I'm super proud of him on that level, but how he carried the company on his back for over a decade and still did so much work for charity.
02:03:08.000He apparently got a couple of dick grabbers.
02:03:11.000I don't know what the real story is, but I'll tell you what, of all the guys that I know, I'm super supportive of Hulk because he was super supportive of me.
02:03:23.000Right now, he finally got back and they finally brought him back in to WWE, which I was super excited about because, to me, going into Hall of Fame without Hulk being in there, it was kind of like...
02:03:35.000Pull out the video of me interviewing Hulk Hogan for Spike TV. I got a chance to interview him for Spike TV back in the day when he was...
02:03:43.000Spike TV went into the wrestling business for a little bit.
02:03:48.000I helped them do that because I was one of the names that brought, you know, that's when I was wrestling.
02:03:51.000So for me as a kid, I mean, I was a giant fan of Jimmy Superfly Snuka and Bob Backlund, all that when I was in high school, early 80s, and Hulk Hogan.
02:03:59.000So for me, to get a chance to interview Hulk Hogan, it was...
02:05:58.000Oh man, one of the nice guys on the planet.
02:06:00.000But Hulk, I mean, when I got to do my stuff with him, because we not only did the Malone stuff, you know, with me and Malone against Rodman and Hogan, but the next month, they come in, and because we shot that angle on The Tonight Show,
02:06:15.000and the next month, they go in, Hogan and Bischoff, and they run Jay off the set.
02:06:22.000I come in from the wings, not Hulk on his ass, and it's me and Jay Leno against Hogan and Bischoff.
02:06:30.000You fucking Jay Leno holding the Hulk down!
02:06:52.000Another guy, I mean, he came and worked out with us, and he didn't spend as much time like Malone did, because Malone's like a super athlete.
02:09:58.000You know, what I love about Sly, like, you know, you go back to, and a lot of people don't know that story, I'm sure you do, you know, how he wrote that script of Rocky and would not sell it.
02:10:08.000They wanted, like, Ryan O'Neill to play Rocky or someone?
02:11:30.000I guess he's on the set for a couple of weeks by this time.
02:11:34.000And he says, I'll tell you what, D... And you remember, every top alpha dog is in that first movie, because he grabbed the heavies of the heavies, the guys who had the biggest names.
02:11:45.000And Austin said, in a world of alpha dogs, there is one number one guy, and his name is Sylvester Stallone.
02:11:55.000And he said when he were doing the Hollywood fight in the back, Stallone was like, come on!
02:14:23.000I didn't push them to be bestsellers because they weren't really worthy.
02:14:27.000This is, because I know it's going to really help people.
02:14:30.000And here's the hook that I want to do.
02:14:32.000The reason I want people to get it, pre-order it now.
02:14:35.000And this is what I'm going to give with this.
02:14:38.000Anyone, and it's up on my site, if you go to ddpyoga.com slash positivelyunstoppable, And you order the book there, there'll be an address right there, the DDP Yoga Performance Center, which is 1239 Concord Road, Smyrna, Georgia,
02:14:53.00030080. If you send me a self-addressed stamped envelope, we've got these book plates that random house, it's a random house book, and they send me these book plates that I'm going to sign.
02:15:06.000And if you send me that self-adjust stamped envelope with a proof that you purchased the book, that you pre-ordered the book, I'm gonna send you my autograph.
02:15:16.000Well, autograph in the book, when I'm doing a Comic-Con, I'm $40 for a picture, $40 for an autograph, $60 combo.
02:16:37.000I'm not exactly sure how that works, but I just know if you go to ddpyoga.com, it's going to be cheaper, and you can get it for a month, three months, a year, whatever.
02:18:21.000He's always trying to protect me and vice versa.
02:18:23.000But when I blew my back out to where we are today, We have actually take out the wrestling shit.
02:18:31.000We have 16 years of footage of this entire journey up and down and up and down and how We became with the program at eight-year overnight success And this is one of the most inspiring movies.
02:18:46.000I know anybody will ever see and that'll be out this year and um That's really it.