Justin Credible On His Relationship With DDP, Losing Opportunities Due To His Relapses
Justin Credible has had many ups and downs both in the wrestling world and outside of it. His life outside the ring will be detailed in an upcoming documentary titled Credible which is directed by David Gere.
Credible (real name – Pete Polaco) and Gere joined our WINCLY podcast where they discussed the film and also answered why Diamond Dallas Page distanced himself from the doc despite helping Credible get his life back in order. The interview took place a week before his arrest earlier this month.
"Simply, my personal relationship with Dallas has staved," Credible said to Nick Hausman. "I've spoken to him very recently, but the documentary thing just didn't fit?
"It's hard for me to differentiate, where I am, quite frankly trying to be in recovery. It wasn't Dallas' fault. It wasn't the production company on my end's fault. It was just different times, different places. It didn't sync up either business or production-wise.
In December 2017, Credible and had to be ushered from the ring by several other wrestlers. Shortly afterwards, he and DDP connected with Page offering to help Credible overcome his demons.
"Dallas is a great dude and I have the utmost respect and Dallas is on my side 100 percent," said Credible. "He truly cares about the people he works with and unfortunately we didn't cross all of the i's and dot the t's meaning wrong place, wrong time.
Credible has had several relapses over the years and he mentions that opportunities have been lost due to those events.
"For my family, unfortunately, I've had opportunities come and go due to my relapses," Credible said without revealing the specifics of those opportunities lost. "I've gotten clean a number of times and I've gone back.
"[Director] David [Gere] came on the scene and he was able to communicate hope. For me it was more about hope [than those opportunities]. For somebody who's 45 years old and all he knows in his professional life is pro wrestling... it was like, 'woah,' somebody actually cares. Dave and his production company are so on-hand. Working with him is effortless and I felt it was a story that needed to be told.
"For me, I'm grateful to be given this opportunity to share my story of alcoholism and addiction."
One of the parts of the documentary is Credible being bailed out of jail and Gere discusses why he chose to keep that in the film.
"The executive producer Douglas Cartelli actually put up the bond to get Pete out of jail and we shot it," stated Gere. "You'll see in the second trailer, it was such an emotional day that he became frustrated. He sort of snapped in terms of 'why am I doing this? Is this going to cyclically continue and come back to bite me'...
"There were breaking moments in terms of the producers and the production crew, but of course, our priority was to make sure Pete was okay. We bailed him out as friends and had to sit there all day and wait. That process was arduous and kind of confusing. We had to wait 5-6 hours in front of a prison in New Haven, Connecticut.
"We decided to get the cameraman there and put it in the documentary because it's one of the low points. It speaks to where Pete had fallen and where he needs to go."
Credible will be released soon and trailers for the documentary can be viewed at credibledocumentary.com.
Check out the WINCLY podcast in the audio player below which features more from Credible, including him discussing his continued battle with sobriety and more. The episode also features all of the latest news and exclusive interviews with Impact World Champion Johnny Impact, Flip Gordon, WWE Superstar Matt Hardy and Glacier!