Nathan weqvozm

So when Diamond Dallas Page talks about how the legendary “American Dream” offered him the break that would propel his wrestling career at age 35 and ultimately make him a WWE Hall of Famer, he of course bursts into the “Dusty voice.”

Page had been viewed mainly as an announcer, a manager, a producer in the early 1990s. He tore a rotator cuff at the end of 1992 during a match and decided to leave World Championship Wrestling – rather than being fired — to work on the independents, get more ring experience and learn more of his craft from mentor Jake “The Snake” Roberts.

Shortly after new WCW boss Eric Bischoff gave him his job back, Page was at the Power Plant, WCW’s training center in Atlanta when Rhodes asked Page to help with a tryout for a potential new performer.

“We got in there for about 20 minutes and I did my thing,” Page says. “I go in the next day to see Dusty and we make small talk and then he says – start Dusty voice — ‘What do you got?’

“I told him my ideas and he said” – Page resumes the Dusty voice — “You know, D, I know you always see yourself as a top performer in our bidness, but I gotta be honest I have never seen that until yesterday. So keep doing what you’re doing.”

He returns to his own voice — “I was like, wow, now he believes in me as a wrestler.”

“Without Dusty Rhodes, there is no Diamond Dallas Page. Without Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, there is no three-time world champion. Without them both, there definitely isn’t a WWE Hall of Famer.”

The WWE Hall of Fame is where Page will be Friday night in Orlando (8 p.m. ET, WWE Network) when he is inducted as part of the Class of 2017. Page will be inducted by Bischoff.

Roberts, a WWE Hall of Famer whose amazing reclamation from years of drug use thanks to Page, will be there, too. Rhodes died in June 2015.

“Dusty Rhodes would have inducted me. No question,” Page said. “It’s bittersweet. I’m going to have to do a lot of breathing during the section when I talk about him. I’m going to have to make the stories funny (to keep from getting too emotional).

“Dusty had an incredible way of making me believe in me. I would watch him do it with so many other people, and the thinking has to become nobody believes in me more than me.”

Starting his wrestling career in his mid-30s, Page was somewhat of an anomaly. With WCW, he went on to become a three-time world champion, two-time United States champion, four-time tag team champion and the world television champion. Along the way, he worked with some of the biggest names in wrestling history and also became one of the primary foils for the NWO, when they were the hottest act in the wrestling business.

While his wrestling career will be at the heart of the weekend, Page has gained fame as the entrepreneur behind DDP Yoga. A Shark Tank appearance increased his business substantially and helped fund a DDP Performance Center in Georgia, he said.

At a recent autograph signing in Kentucky, he said 50 percent of those who approached him were wrestling fans and 50 percent were DDP Yoga devotees.

“There have been people asking for (his Hall of Fame induction) for a long time, but there are people now who don’t even know Diamond Dallas Page the wrestler,” he said. “To them, it’s secondary to what DDP Yoga is all about.”

In advance of his Hall of Fame induction, Page, who turns 61 next week, spoke to For The Win about his career, his hopes for People’s Champion vs. People’s Champion match against Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson that never happened and DDP Yoga.

A new three-disc DVD set called “Diamond Dallas Page: Positively Living” is also set to be released. The bio of his DVD features the call from Paul “Triple H” Levesque alerting Page to his Hall of Fame selection with cameras on Page and Levesque. It is the first time WWE has recorded the call to the Hall.

I told my wife and my business partner and then I told my daughters because I knew they would want to shop for gowns (laughing). Then I told my ex-wife and her husband because we are close with them. I kept it pretty quiet and then all the rumors started blaring that I was going in so I told my crew at the DDP Yoga Performance Center because they were saying, ‘Dude you’re going in, you’re going in.’ There have been rumors for the last couple of years but not like this year. To get the call was awesome.

It was in October in Point Pleasant, N.J. I thought it was just a callback. I called him like three times and there is nobody busier than he is and Stephanie (McMahon) is. When he called, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to ask him.

We started talking about my career. Then I realized that he’s really putting me over. We’re pretty tight so I know he’s not going to just say stuff like that. I thought, is this the call?

I realized that they were filming it and I’m a pretty emotional guy and they caught it. At the end of it, the producer asked about the call. I said, ‘I wish you were filming it because he said some amazing stuff.’ He said, ‘I am. We were filming him, too.’ He told me right there, ‘This is the end of your biopic.’ I was like, ‘Wow. There couldn’t be a better ending.’

No one had ever done it the way Diamond Dallas Page did it. It took one person at a time to believe in me. It’s just like DDP Yoga. I not only had to find one person to believe in me, I had to find one person to heal. That’s where it all came from. I had to help heal one person after another after another after another.

Einstein once said it’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stick with the problem longer. That’s the story of my whole wrestling career and also with DDP Yoga. I try to get people who are really beat up or really overweight and remind them, ‘It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon and it’s a lifestyle.’ I’ve seen people lose hundreds of pounds and gain it back because they didn’t make it part of their lifestyle.

Everyone thinks it’s who you know or who knows you, but I think it’s all about who is willing to say they know you. Who’s willing to put their name on the line for you? That’s what Dusty did for me. That’s what Eric Bischoff did it for me. Hulk Hogan did it for me, Randy Savage did it for me. And that what Scott Hall and Kevin Nash did for me.

If I don’t drop the NWO, I never have the rocket that I got. Nobody had dropped those guys. If Kevin and Scott didn’t believe it, it never happens. They were like, ‘He’s ready.’ I helped both of those guys so much earlier. We helped each other. When I really needed them, they were there. I was ready to them.

The booking committee did not believe it. I said to (WCW), I’m outta here. (Bleep) you. I’m going to try New York (the WWE). I don’t want to be here anymore. They’re never going to give me an opportunity.

That happened and then Savage asked to work with me. … You can bet it was Randy’s choice to put me over because I was ready. I’ve got a story about that which will have tears rolling down people’s cheeks, but you’ll have to wait until the Hall of Fame.

My contract was $1.2 million dollars and it was with Turner, which means it was with Time Warner. That’s as good as money in the bank as you’ll ever find. But I needed to go. I was almost 46 years old. I knew how beat up I was. … I thought I could go another three years strong on adrenaline and then had to crash out. I’m a Ferrari, but I had 987,000 miles on me. I knew I had to go. To get Turner to negotiate with me, I had to leave $487,000 on the table.

Nash said to me, ‘The job’s going to be there when you’re done. We’ll all going to leave together.’ Dusty would have said, ‘Take the money.’ I didn’t listen to either one of them. Maybe I should have. I learned so many lessons. I don’t think anything is more valuable than to learn lessons through things that look like they’re the worst thing that happened to you. How do you figure out what to do next time when you say, ‘OK that didn’t work out for me coming in there’?

I wanted to do People’s Champion vs. People’s Champion. You know who the People’s Champion is today? The biggest star in the world. In. The. World. I don’t think any one of the boys could be happier than I am for Rock. I would have loved to have worked for him. I went a different way. I should have understood  — no matter what age you are or where you are in your life – you have to walk away from the table if you believe in that goal.

I had this goal two years before I ever was at this table. I told Kimberly at the time. The Rock will be making a movie or he’ll be injured, but he won’t be on TV. I will shove it down their throats, say I am the real People’s Champion. I saw it all. I didn’t go with it. I went with the other angle, which is nowhere near as good. I realized you’ve got to get up sometimes and turn away. If I don’t learn that lesson there is no DDP Yoga today. So many times I got up from the table with different deals.

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