Exclusive Interview With Diamond Dallas Page
On Yoga, WCW, WWE and life lessons.
On His New Performance Center
DDP: The DDP Yoga Performance Center is finally coming together. Everyone is like Oh my God, DDP Yoga is everywhere! Its like this thing is blowing up, youre an overnight success. Yeah, 13 years. Like so many bands, you know, I dont really hear it anymore because I dont listen to enough new music, but when it was Bob Seger or whatever band it was at the time, Creedence Clearwater Revival, whoever it was, so many times people thought they were an overnight success, because of a big hit. Theyd probably been playing in a band since they were 12, so they were probably about 15 years in at that point. So this whole DDP Yoga Performance Center that were building right now is pretty amazing, because its not just a workout place. Were actually building sound stages. The overall view point bro is were building Netflix for fitness, and all of my workouts that you can get on DDPYoga.com at some point, anybody who buys the program now, or invests in the program theyre going to get, at Christmas time, a pretty nice subscription to my lets call it network for lack of a better word right now. And theres already 50 workouts in the can. Theyre going to get all those, plus theyre going to get DDP Yoga for kids, seniors, and by seniors I mean like 65, 70, 80 years old. AS: In the past Ive heard you talk about a DDP Yoga app. Is that the same thing? DDP: Right. It started as an app, and its turned into this. Everyone is starting to understand that the DVD shelf life is very limited. Im 58 years young so Ive watched it go from records to 8-Tracks, to cassettes, to CDs to MP3s. Music on anything else but on your phone would be absurd at this point. Pretty much everybody has all their music on their phone. Thats how its going to be with the DDP Yoga world in the next 2 to 3 years. There are plenty of yoga studios right now doing workouts live, possibly over a year or so now, but its filmed very amateurish. Its a camera that zooms in on the teacher, and theres a wideshot. Im doing a five camera shoot every workout. And there will be a super, super amount of different workouts like some for just beginners and then theres a spot for what they call beginner, beginner. And that means people who are really super ass limited, they can only do so much. So what I do is take the person from the beginner, beginner, and I couldnt to this in the beginning, no pun intended, because it would have been too many DVDs. Now you go to Netflix, it seems they got a billion movies there, but you can find whatever you need. And youve got your favorites, youve got your upcoming movies you want to see. Were going to have all that for the workout. And probably 3 to 4 days a week I will do one live. It might be at 6 oclock in the morning on the west coast, which means 9 oclock in the morning on the East coast. We are in 147 different countries, which is pretty cool. DDP Yoga is everywhere, and everyday I sell anywhere from 10 to 30 international workouts. They can be going to Dubai. Ive sent some to Iraq. Ive sent them all over the place, its pretty crazy. On Helping Jericho
On Other Wrestlers Using the Program
AS: Youve been down to the NXT Performance Center, and a lot of wrestlers are doing DDP Yoga. Which wrestler has surprised you most that has taken up the program? DDP: Kane. Ill get a text from him. D, I fell off the wagon Im getting sore, I gotta get back on my DDP yoga. The funniest one is from Zack Ryder not long ago. He wrote D, my hips, my back and my hamstrings are getting really tight. What workout should I do? I said You havent been doing the workouts, have you? And he wrote back Well not as religious as I should, but Im back on it. So I wrote Ryder back and said Zack, youve seen all of the boys who are around my age. And Im 58. You see how they get around, how crippled up they are. And you look at me, and then I wrote Enough said. If I can do crazy strong s**t and my buddies, unless theyre doing it, cannot. And even if theyre doing it, they dont have 13 years in. Im still cracking Diamond Cutters. I show up at an independent wrestling show? Somebodys getting a Diamond Cutter. Maybe a couple of them. I can still do that. My goal is to hit one Diamond Cutter in my 70s. When I turn 70, thats one of my goals, and Im gonna pop right up off the mat. People are gonna go Oh my God. People may have forgot who Diamond Dallas Page was. Another 12 years goes by? I dont think so. With the WWE Network, I know they wont. Guys like me and Jake, and Scott Hall and Kevin Nash and Stinger, well he worked all the way through this, but all the guys that were so hot in the 90s, they were red hot guys, guys that main-evented pay-per-views, they will never be forgotten by the wrestling fans. The casual viewer? Maybe. But whats really funny today, theres so many of those guys who are right now 22 to 40. Thats a big span that dont even watch wrestling, but they were so fanatically watching when we were having that crazy run from 95 to 2002, they were so ravenous that were ingrained in their life forever. So its really cool. I actually give a shit about the people I work with and people invest in my program. I want to see them have amazing results. Click "next" below for part 2...