A Closer Look At New DDP Documentary "Relentless"

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Relentless, another documentary on Diamond Dallas Page, recently became available on Amazon Prime in the U.S. and the UK.

Instead of reiterating the story of his hall of fame career, Page takes the viewers on a twenty year long journey on how his workout program, DDPY, came to be and how it soared to success.

DDP begins the documentary on how he suffered from a major back injury. The doctors were telling him he would never wrestle again. He explains that his then-wife Kimberly tried to get him to try yoga, but for a long time he had no desire to do so.

"I was one of those dudes who wouldn't be caught dead doing yoga," Page said.

Page finally decided to give it a shot and soon found results. He began to add his rehabilitation moves along with slow-burn calisthenics (push-ups, crunches, etc.). After some time, Page also began to incorporate dynamic resistance (engaging of the muscles) to his workouts, which morphed into what DDPY is today. Three months later, he was back in the ring and would go on to become WCW champion on three separate occasions.

The rest of the documentary expressed Dallas' various trials in getting his brand new company off the ground and how many times it almost went under. He would explain that he had put his entire wrestling money into his vision, yet almost lost it all. After meeting his business partner Steve Yu, rebranding his company from YRG (Yoga for Regular Guys) to DDP YOGA, and a video of Page helping a disabled veteran to walk again going viral on social media, it became an "eight year overnight success". DDP would go on to be on Shark Tank and build his own Performance Center where DDPY group fitness classes were taught (before the pandemic temporarily closed it in March 2020).

The end featured Page in his last match that happened on AEW Dynamite in January 2020 where he competed in a six-man tag match with Dustin Rhodes and QT Marshall against MJF and The Butcher & The Blade. DDP would do a dive off the top rope at sixty-four years old.

Diamond Dallas Page sat down with Wrestling Inc to discuss Relentless in detail, commenting that it wasn't meant to be a documentary in the beginning. He said the project at first was to be for the company as a promotional tool in order to demonstrate what the DDPY mission statement was all about. However, after some time, it grew into something greater they couldn't help but share with the world.

"And so I watched it..and I was like, man, this s**t is really inspirational. This is bigger than the company," he said.

Page also talked about how long it took to put Relentless together, saying it took them almost four years to complete it. He said it started to bother him that they hadn't released it by August 2019, when they believed it to be finished. Dallas Page and Steve Yu's media company, Comeback Studios, had begun to help shoot promotional work for AEW at that time and said the documentary had been put on the back-burner. DDP mentioned it was bothering him that it had not been released yet until his final match last January. "I woke up the next morning and looked at Payge [his girlfriend] and said, 'I now know why Relentless was never released,' and she asked me why..and I said, 'because of last night'. Those moments all came together to happen."

Dallas noted how important everything that led up to that match was to him and how happy he was to be able to include that in the documentary. He briefly spoke on his promo he cut against MJF, his first appearance on TNT in nineteen years.

"And somewhere in there we started hearing people chant, 'yoga'-remember that? And you know how I hate when people call my s**t yoga. I really couldn't [correct them] because it was so organic, and so natural. In Relentless you see Joe Rogan saying, 'you make yoga cool'. And now, people all f'n chanting 'yoga'. That's something that's never happened before anywhere..but in a wrestling ring? Especially that crew, it's mostly guys. If they chant DDPY at some point, that will be the most insane thing ever. It was the most heart wrenching thing, my god! It was better than them chanting 'DDP' cause that had been done a million times before. I really did think we've crossed over."

Nathan Mowery, the director of the documentary and owner of the film company Kind Punk, also spoke with Wrestling Inc to talk on Relentless and expressed that the theme they wanted to share in the documentary is that if you pursue something with all of your heart, you can accomplish anything. He said that they wanted to inspire people to not just invest in DDPY, but to invest in themselves.

"I think if you're a wrestling fan, you've heard how good of a heart Dallas has," Mowery said. "I think this accurately shows that Dallas is not somebody that just talks the talk, but he walks the walk. The results are pretty evident. You see a constant wave of people betting on themselves and things working out for them in a huge way. Dallas is a great example of this and I think this shows people how to at least start to accomplish what they want."

Mowery's response as to why DDP's WWE Hall of Fame speech wasn't included in the documentary was that they simply could not show everything. He mentioned that there were years worth of footage to go through and that it took an eternity to do so. "If we had mentioned every accolade that Dallas had, or every notable moment that has happened in his career, Relentless would have been a twenty hour long movie," he joked.

Mowery was also asked about negative responses to the things that Dallas has done for other people around him, especially Jake "The Snake" Roberts and Scott Hall, that he only does things for the publicity of his business. He said that the reason behind Relentless was not to merely sell DDPY, but to sell inspiration.

"I hope someone doesn't see it as some infomercial, it's not. It's literally just a string of amazing stories that are all connected through DDP and DDPY. I know there will be people who watch Relentless and they're going to change. I know a year or two from now we're going to hear about people who saw this and changed their lives. That's what I want and I know that is what Dallas wants, too."

If you wish to check out Relentless for yourself, you can click here. It is indeed a good telling of how Diamond Dallas Page lives his life and how he inspires people to be the same way. While it isn't so much about wrestling, it does have a lot of heart that anyone (wrestling fan or not) can enjoy and get something out of.