10 Funniest Wrestling Shoot Stories

10. How Eazy E And DDP Became Buddies

In the late eighties, long before they became the boss at WCW and the other people’s champion, respectively, Eric Bischoff and Diamond Dallas Page worked at Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association in Minneapolis. The man who would become The Bisch was an on-air interviewer and occasional commentator, recruited out of the sales department because he happened to own a suit, while nightclub impresario Page Falkenberg Jnr. (as he was back in the day) moonlighted for the AWA as a manager.

One night Bischoff and a few of the boys were at a bar in Rochester, Minnesota, and Page was… well, being Page. ‘Diamond Dallas Page’ was a persona that fit him snugger than his white leather trousers and snakeskin boots. If you’re imagining a cross between Burt Reynolds and David Lee Roth, you’re not far off. Bischoff and DDP rubbed each other the wrong way that evening, but the altercation didn’t turn physical until the hotel later on. The pair of them managed to avoid anything nastier than some shoving to and fro, and returned to their rooms to sleep it off.

The next morning, Page was visited by a suitably chastened and horribly hungover Bischoff, who admitted he’d been “a real a**hole last night.” Bischoff announced that there were two ways they could deal with it, and proceeded to reach into his own mouth and remove a false tooth on a plate: he could either accept his apology and shake his hand, or punch him in the mouth now. Either way was good with him.

The way Page tells it, it was the best possible comeback to defuse the situation: he laughed and shook his hand. A few years later when they were on the WCW commentary table together, Page remembered the incident and warmed to the rookie announcer, making a point of teaching Bischoff how to call a match. The rest is history.