DDP Talks DDP YOGA, Recovery And Progress For Jake Roberts, Scott Hall, More

The WNS Podcast Crew interviewed "Diamond" Dallas Page to discuss the success of DDP Yoga, the revival of Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Scott Hall, and more. Here are some highlights from the interview:

On DDP Yoga gaining the popularity it has: "I expected it to gain the popularity it has only because it's changing lives on a different level. In the beginning, it could have been any weight loss program that really had nothing to do with weight loss. I never developed this program for weight loss. I developed it to heal my body. And anybody who's listening, obviously wrestling fans who are listening your show, a lot of them may have heard but the bottom line is that I didn't start wrestling until I was 35. My career did not take off until I was 40 and that was in 1996. The beginning of the Monday Night Wars which is probably the greatest time in professional wrestling as far as the fans are concerned because it had the WCW directly competing against the WWF which is pretty fascinating at the time. And when that happened in 1996 and wrestling blew up huge, well I was lucky that I put in 5 years of working my ass off you know. And it all paid off. Because when wrestling blew up, so did my career. And '97-'98 it was on top of the world. And then I blew out my back. I blew it out so badly. It was my L4 and L5. I had ruptured those discs between my vertebrae and three specialists told me my career was over. And I had just signed a multi-million dollar three year deal and they're telling me I'm done. It's pretty disheartening. But I was actually pulled back in. I was married at the time. Kimberly was trying to get me to do yoga to heal my body and my mind. So, it was like yoga? No way I'm not doing that. So I get when people go "DDP's doing yoga? What?" I get that. It came out of necessity and I ended up after about three weeks feeling a significant difference. So I started believing in it and I started adding it to my rehab I already started doing and mixing them together.

"The rehab techniques with the yoga positions and then I added some old school calisthenics. When I realized that dynamic resistance. It's actually like isosymmetric, the actual real word is isokinetic. That's what it means when you're engaging your muscles and creating your own resistance. People aren't going to remember isokinetics so I figure dynamic resistance. That's the best way to explain it. So, when I realized by wearing a heart monitor that I could get my heart rate jacked up standing still with minimal joint impact yet still dramatically increase my flexibility and core strength, well I knew I had a workout that's never been done before. So, when Arthur.you gotta remember Arthur Borman, the disabled veteran, the guy with over 8 million views on his video and counting, you gotta remember that was 6 years ago. DDP Yoga is not about look at my abs. DDP Yoga is about look at my life. Look how I own my life now a la Jake Roberts, a la Scott Hall, a la Chris Jericho, who's back was blown out, they said he was done. That was two years ago. He saw the original Arthur Bohrman vdeo. He was so inspired. A guy like me, who wouldn't be caught dead doing yoga, add that to a wrestler doing another wrestler's workout. That's unheard of. It's never been done before. It took someone like Chris Jericho's class and stature to say "this works you need to do it." Before I knew it, I was sending DDP Yoga to Kane, Santino, The Miz, Zack Ryder and the list kept going on and on. It was all Chris Jericho. Ryback, before he was coming back, all his core strength and flexibility was gone.The young "Feed Me More" cat who's eating it up, he came back and gave DDP Yoga huge props. It's all because of Chris Jericho."

On the progress of donations for Scott Hall: "It really helps show the boys. Especially Scott and Jake. To me, they were two of the greatest wrestlers and characters and promos. I mean they had it all. To me, both of those guys, nobody did it better. There are people who have done it as good as them. Shawn Michaels is his own animal. But after that, those guys could have both been 5 time World Champions. But they had a little problem with alcohol, drugs, pills, etc. Towards the end of their career, they didn't really want to be around. And I'm not saying DDP Yoga saved their life by any stretch of the imagination, I just think both of them ran out of hope. And go back to looking at Arthur Bohrman's life and what he went through and when we finally re-tuned that video up and just changed the certain thing and put a song in here so that it really grabbed at you emotionally. I gave him hope. One guy gave him hope, and he gave millions hope. He's the one who gave Jake and Scott, they're like "Wow! That's amazing!". I gotta say Jake because Scott hadn't even seen it. He saw the before and after. It's not even an after, it's a during picture because he's not at the end of it yet. But Scott Hall was in his hospital room and one of his fans had com in.

"He was helping out at the hospital and he showed them that before, and I'm going to call it a during picture, of Jake's recovery and he was blown away. So, again someone gives someone hope and then they give millions hope. So when you ask me did I really think this thing was going to blow up? Yea I did. But I didn't think it was going to happen now. I thought it was going to happen a couple of years ago. And then it didn't and then I realized there's so many times we want to quit. We hit a wall, we fall down, and all's it take is getting back up again and moving forward. But if you quit, you fail. But as long as you're still trying to at least get some part of that goal you never fail. You just keep working. And you just gotta keep going. I can't tell you how many times I've second guessed myself over this period and it's a lot. But there would always be someone who would send me that email. Or I'd get some kind of text saying "I can't tell you how much you've changed my life". There are so many things people have said to me over the years from I wanted to die, like Jake. Jake, to me, out of all the people I've helped so far that's the most personal to me because Jake Roberts helped me find my way into professional wrestling when everyone laughed at me and said you'll never be anything, you're too old, it won't happen. And they were wrong. But he taught me a lot along the way like how to make people care when it came to the ring. And now it's just reversed and now I'm helping him do something and now he's so motivated about helping people. And that's the really cool part of the story. And Scotty, he's over 60 days alcohol free, pill free, everythingIt's all because of Chris Jericho. And he can't wait to start working out. April 9 is his hip surgery. So, it's going to be really cool to watch him physically continue to change and get stronger and come back and be The Bad Guy. I think it's going to be really cool that this journey continues."

On whether helping people is his new calling in life: "I think it's been that for a while now. I swear to God, I said this about 7 years ago. You look at 1996. 1997 I was involved in the feud of the year, according to Pro Wrestling Illustrated, with the Macho Man. I was ranked the #4 wrestler in the world 1997-1998. I hit heights of professional wrestling when it was at its highest. And I said that it's funny because I honestly believe when this thing blows up it's going to overshadow everything that happened in the 90's for me. And that's a bold statement because that was crazy hot. It was like I was living the dream at a different level. Just getting there on TV and being a part of the show. And being a part of it was living the dream. Making money and living my dream was the dream. I always tell people the American Dream is finding something you love to do and figure out a way to get people to pay you to do it. I did it in my younger days when I was running night clubs. By the time I was 21 I was running night clubs. It was so much fun I can't even explain it to you. And I left that at 35 to follow my dreams of being in professional wrestling. I started at 31 part time, but I left to go full time to take a shot at getting in WCW as a manager. I managed The Freebirds and Scott Hall. Now this goes back with me and Scott Hall. We have always helped each other when the other needed it. He needed a new look from A to Z. From the toothpick to the black hair to the brush cut beard.

"It was all my ideas. He just played them out perfectly and he became one of the biggest stars in the business. And when he came back to WCW with Nash and they were the baddest guys on the planet and nobody dropped them for nine months. I did. Nobody got to them before DDP, nobody. And when that night I put on the now shirt and went to give Kev the big hug and Scott grabbed my hand and we shook hands, he went to pull away, I pulled him into the Diamond Cutter, the roof blew off. That was the beginning. Kevin Nash getting backdropped over the top rope through the table, me taking off into the crowd, that was the beginning of my career rocketing. And right after that it falls to Randy Savage. And the feud I had with Randy Savage, again feud of the year. I was so blessed and it was Scott that really made that happen with Kevin. And again, now I'm just coming back and helping Scott after he helped me. There's a lot of history with me, Jake and Scott. So, you know it was an amazing time in my life. But what I'm doing today, I mean what I'm doing today I can't even express in words. I get choked up all the time because it's so emotional. And it's powerful. 20% of our sales everyday, come from friends, family and co-workers. I mean people are telling each other about it. You know that's as cool as it gets to me."

On his Docu-mercial: "We went out to L.A. last week. Jake came out with me. I brought Arthur and a couple of other great stories. We have so many stories. We've been filming Jake from the beginning. As a matter of fact, yesterday we filmed our first workout that we had in like 5 weeks because of shoulder surgery. And he's so far ahead of where he should be right now. Especially for being a beat up 57 year old warrior. But Jake's videos will be one of the ones coming up soon. But you can see that transformation in the video. It's like really powerful. Of course we're filming everything with Scott too. But we've got a lot of other people out there too and one of them is this guy Slim. And I actually brought him and his wife out to be part of the docu-mercial. Again, DDP Yoga is not about weight loss. It's about healing my body, healing my back so I can go back into that ring at 42 and live the dream again. The whole weight loss thing is just an awesome side effect."

You can download the full interview by clicking here, or listen to it below: