"What I did in professional wrestling was amazing. I was the anomaly that lived a dream at a different level. I reached so much higher than people could ever imagine. But I imagined because that's where it starts. Manifesting your dreams to reality. But what I'm doing todayÂ…DDP Yoga is the coolest thing I have ever done, ever. And this is just the beginning. This is the tip of the iceberg. In 3 years my friend, DDP Yoga will be a household name. And that's the kind of things that I say to myself every single day," stated former professional wrestling superstar Diamond Dallas Page, who talked about the health benefits of his DDP Yoga workouts and what it's been like to inspire millions. Check it out!
PC: My man, DDP, how are you doing?
DDP: Awesome, man! DDP Yoga is blowing up huge and it's one day closer to being a household name and changing the world one person at a time.
PC: I remember when you first started DDP Yoga and it seemed like a great idea, but did you imagine in your wildest dreams that this thing would get this big?
DDP: You know, I did once I saw what happened with the disabled veteran. The disabled veteran was 5'6" and weighed 297 pounds and he could not walk without the aid of a knee brace and back brace and cane. When I saw him go through that transformation, and not only did he lose 140 pounds, but he lost the knee brace, the back brace, and the cane. And not just walk without a cane, he ran. And when I saw that and I watched him over that 10-month period, because he was sending me video all the time, when I saw it, I was like, "Okay, this is proof that my program works." There is no other fitness programs on the planet that's anything like that testimony. The closest thing is gonna be Jared with Subway, which is total bullshit. Mine is real. That's another thing, it's real and as it went on, I noticed how many people were buying into the program because of it. And they look at me and see what kind of shape I'm in, especially now at 58 years young. But it was really Chris Jericho that...when he blew his back out and they said his career was over, I had contacted him on Twitter and we talked. I sent him that video and he said, "Dallas, whatever that guy did, I want to do it. I will do whatever you tell me to." And getting someone from the business, from my business, sports entertainment and professional wrestling, there are a lot of huge egos in my world and you don't ever hear anyone else talking about doing someone else's program; they're doing their own. Chris was really hurting and he knew what happened to me and how I built my body back through what would be known as DDP Yoga. And when he got in the program, within 5 weeks, he was 85% pain free and within 3 months, he was 100% pain free. And I was just retooling the whole brand name from YRG to DDP Yoga, tag line "It Ain't Your Mama's Yoga." Jericho was talking about the program as if I was paying him and I wasn't. I have never paid Chris Jericho. Now on the podcast, I paid him to be on that because he never would take any money from me. Now, I can do it, but he's saying the same stuff he's always said. It's amazing because Jericho turned probably 50 other wrestlers onto the program, including guys who are retired or working today, and there is another 70 at the WWE Performing Center all doing the program. So once I saw that and I saw so many lives changed, I started to realize what I was a part of in the 90's, the Monday night wars, Diamond Dallas Page, the wrestling character according to Pro Wrestling Illustrated was the #4 wrestler in the world in '97 and '98. And in '99, according to WOW, I was #1 and according to Pro Wrestling Illustrated, I was #6, so I would say I was about 10 or 9, which is pretty damn impressive when you consider the guys who were over at that period of time. But I believe it's gonna do more. I believe DDP Yoga is gonna do more in the next 3 years over everything I did in wrestling.
PC: When I see the amount of work and energy you put into your program and you're traveling all over getting the word out and helping people, do you ever have to take a step back to recharge the battery or is it full throttle right now until you get it where you want it, which is, like you said, a household name?
DDP: I'm full throttle when I'm going, but I do need to recharge. The honest to God truth is, being on the road and kicking ass in your 30's is way easier than in your 40's, and your 40's is way easier than your 50's, and I'm 23 months from 60 right now. I just turned 58 last month and I'm still going pretty strong. But I do need to sit back sometimes. I'm at the crib right now in Atlanta, Georgia and I'm chilled out, but I'm working the whole time because we're designing the first DDP Yoga Performance Center; we are designing an app that when it releases, it will be available on your computer, your Ipad, and your Droid. It's gonna be DDP Yoga App. The initial app will be free and the subscription will be the Netflix of fitness. That's what I'm designing right now, along with producing two movies, one "Inspired" the movie and that's pretty much the Arthur Boorman [disabled veteran] story of how one man inspired one man and he inspired millions. And then the story after that is how do you stay inspired? How do you move forward when you're pulling yourself down with emotional gravity? We explain how to do that, so you're actually learning something from this movie; you're not just inspired. And then the other one of course is the "Resurrection of Jake The Snake!", which again is another really awesome and inspiring movie that really gets into the world of the addict. Where Jake is today is amazing to where Jake was 18 months ago. But he's still got a ways to go and I think he always will.
PC: Speaking of Jake, the work that you did with Jake The Snake and the work that you did with Scott Hall was illuminated recently with their WWE Hall of Fame inductions. What was that moment like for you to be there and see both of those guys, who you inspired so much and resurrected, be inducted on the same night?
DDP: You know both of those guys are good friends of mine too; it's not just two guys I helped out. And knowing that they were at the darkest points of their lives, Jake was a guy at that time who was pissed at God every morning for waking him up. He's been such a bad father at this point of his life that at that time, the only thing he hasn't done is killed himself because he didn't want to cause his family any more pain than he already caused, which is what he said when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. But where he is today, Jake is fighting every day to live a healthier and cleaner life and that's a lot of the reason why he lives right down the street from me. Scott Hall lives down the street from me. Scotty came over and worked out with me yesterday and we went out and had some dinner. We worked out the day before. It's just having that positive energy around these guys. Scott would always say to me, "Dally, how can you always be so fucking positive?" The bottom line is I work at it. I have the same struggles everyone else does, I just know how to handle them better because I know where to go and what to do when I start pulling myself down with emotion gravity. It's like anything, you gotta train your brain to perform at it's highest level. And that's what I tell people. Really look at your life and don't look at all of the things you don't have, look at the things you do have. And then go look at some of those kids that are over in Africa or the way these kids grow up in the Philippines or Mexico. These people have sand bottom floors and corrugated walls. You are living like a king at your lowest point here compared to where they are. So life is relative. It's all in how you push your mindset and that's what I work on all the time for myself. I got a lot of people down at DDP Yoga that work for this company that's doing very well and they count on me to keep the momentum going. But I believe it's just going to keep building because of the ground base it created with social media. That's why I was a little late on your call coming in because our social media part of our company between our YouTube page, Twitter and our Facebook and all of the other videos that we do on top of that that are inspiring and the movie projects are all surrounded around positive energy. When someone comes in my place...I've had one person come around with a sort of negative attitude, he didn't last long (laughing).
PC: When you were an active wrestler, I have seen at times where no matter how many people were in the crowd, they were throwing up the Diamond Cutter sign. This may be hard to answer, but was there more satisfaction in that, being able to make women, men and children on command put up your trademark sign, or is the satisfaction you get from inspiring so many and healing so many people through DDP Yoga unmatchable?
DDP: Well, you got to remember I was the anomaly. In Star Trek the movie, the anomaly was defined as a thing that was never supposed to happen. And if you look at the guy Diamond Dallas Page that came into wrestling as a manager and color commentator by the time I was 31 to by the time I was 35, I had switched from managing and color commentating to being a wrestler. I remember Michael "PS" Hayes literally fell down laughing at the idea. I was a joke and no one believed I could make the transition. A lot of people listen to the naysayers. I listen to them, but I listen to them only to say, "Fuck you. I'm going to do this. You don't tell me what I can or can't do." And that's so many times throughout my life people tell me what I can and can't do. When someone's laughing at me, and I will give you an example of a few things hereÂ…when I started wrestling, they all laughed at me, when I started to ice my body, being my knees, my back and my shoulders, they laughed at me, filming my matches, they laughed at me. I was the only guy that had a camera out and I'm filming every match. When I started to use organic juicing and eating healthier and when I started doing yoga and when I invented my own yoga, they laughed, they laughed, they laughed. Now they are doing all of this stuff that they laughed at me for and they wished they started earlier. So what I found out, when someone is laughing at me, okay, I'm on to something (laughing). So to answer your question, what I did in professional wrestling was amazing. I was the anomaly that lived a dream at a different level. I reached so much higher than people could ever imagine. But I imagined because that's where it starts. Manifesting your dreams to reality. But what I'm doing today...if you look at my life, I have often taken the path less traveled, but with DDP Yoga, I got to the forest and there was no path, so I had to get on a bulldozer and knock down one tree after another. And I never developed this workout for yogis. I developed it for the people that wouldn't be caught dead doing yoga. So really big stretch here, but when you start to seeing the people that started to do the program and within a day, 3 days, a week or 3 weeks...I mean, if you go on Facebook and look up one word, "DDPYOGA", and read what people write me, it will blow your mind. And on Twitter, @RealDDP or @DDPYoga, people all day long are writing stuff, man. DDP Yoga is the coolest thing I have ever done, ever. And this is just the beginning. This is the tip of the iceberg. In 3 years my friend, DDP Yoga will be a household name. And that's the kind of things that I say to myself every single day.
PC: It's been an extreme pleasure and honor speaking with you, I can't wait to see the end result and evolution of DDP Yoga and where you plan on taking this thing. Best of luck to you. Is there anything else you would like to add before I let you go?
DDP: No, I pretty much got it all. The one thing, I talked about disabled veteran Arthur Boorman. If you have never seen that video before and you need to be inspired or you are one of those people who like to pull themselves down with that emotional gravity or you are just someone who has lost hope, go to www.ddpyoga.com for one reason and one reason only, go there and watch that video of Arthur. If that don't change your game, if that don't get you up and rolling and breathing and show you that anything is possible, hit rewind and watch it again. That's all I got brother.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]