PG: In the beginning of the film, I remember you got a little bit emotional when you were talking about how Jake was your mentor and how helped you at the beginning of your career. Some fans might not know that you started wrestling pretty late.
DDP: At 35 years old, 35 and a half years old I started wrestling. I knew Jake from the night club business, well first I knew him from being Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts. I tried wrestling when I was 22 years old and it didn’t work out for me and then I came back as a manager in 1987. But before all of that in 1986, I met Jake in a night club and I was a big fan of his. He made me want to get back into wrestling.
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When I was 22 and it didn’t work out for me, I stopped watching wrestling. I tried to wrestle in 1978 and like I said, it didn’t work out for me. Once I stopped watching wrestling it was Jake that drew me in and he made me want to be involved again or at least give it a try. When I met him in the night club, we just got steady as drinking buddies. I’d see him whenever they were in town. So when I went to the AWA to manage and Floria Championship Wrestling, I hadn’t seen Jake for a while and then when I showed up in WCW as a manager and they wouldn’t let me do that anymore and I had 7 months left on my contract at the time, I decided that I’d try to become a wrestler again.
Around 5 months into it, Jake was coming into WCW and he came into training and recognized me and I became like his driver. I’d go to the shows with him and he would watch my matches from time to time and give me advice. Then he left the company because of a problem and I tore my rotator cuff and then the let me go, WCW didn’t technically fire me but they laid me off and long story short, Jake and I reconnected again and he ended up moving in with me and my ex-wife Kimberly and stayed with us for three months. I couldn’t wait to get in the ring and work out with him.
I knew how to do all the moves, I just needed to learn the psychology – having a match, getting the people involved and getting people to care. For years, he would watch my matches and give me advice, right on up to 1996 when my career started to take off. Then we lost touch with each other for about a year and then he called me in 1997. When I picked up the phone he only said one word, “Congratulations.” I said, “For what”, and he said, “For reinventing the DDT.” That was a pretty big compliment, coming from your mentor and the guy you thought did it better than anybody and especially his finish, it was the best, the DDT. When he hit it the crowd would go crazy, and that’s also what happened with the Diamond Cutter. So, I ended up making a lot of money because of Jake, I ended up making millions of dollars. I always wanted to repay him and I tried to help him a couple of times but he wasn’t ready yet.
PG: What happened this time?
DDP: This time I was moving from LA back to Atalanta and director Steve Yu, who’s also the president of DDPYoga said, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if Jake moved in with you,” and I said “Dude, he doesn’t have to live with me,” because Jake was a handful.
The reason why Kimberly threw him out of the house back when he lived with us 20 years earlier was because he lost a 12-foot black cobra in the house. He really didn’t lose it, he put it in the shower and the snake came out of the tub and hid under the vanity. The snake didn’t come out till I got a snake handler to come and get him.
Bottom line is, Jake took off in three days and went on a bender and she threw him out at that point. I knew he’d be a handful now at 58 years old and I couldn’t even have an intelligent conversation with him back then when we started this time because he was just so….his brain was foggy let’s call it and he was delusional.
He didn’t really have a sense of reality and it was really tough in the beginning. But he tried hard and he worked hard, even though he fell along the way. But he helped me as I went through my journey so I just felt compelled and thank god Steve Yu, the director, felt the same way because I couldn’t have done it by myself. It took my whole crew, it took everybody, to get Jake sober.
PG: When people talk about Jake, the first thing they mention is in-ring psychology. Do you think it had something to do with the fact that his father was also a wrestler or was it all natural talent?
DDP: I think being a second generation wrestler, you kind of look at the business differently. Jake’s father, after his first match, told him he was worthless and gutless and told him that it made him ashamed to be his father. That’s what he said after Jake’s first match and so that pissed Jake off and it made him work 5 times harder.
Back then Jake understood work ethic and he understood the business. He had uncanny sense, sort of like I did too. There are certain people who get it, at a different level. With Jake, because he got his start when there were territories. When you get to go from one territory to another territory to another territory to wrestle, you can make a lot of mistakes along the way and no one knew about it.
Today you got NXT and then you have WWE. I got to practice being Diamond Dallas page in the AWA and Florida Champion Wrestling before I ever got to WCW. Now my matches, they were like – you had one place, WCW or the WWE – you have what you got there and you better be able to deliver and I really couldn’t but I could make it look like I was better than I was and instead of having a territory to go to, I would go back to the Power Plant where I learnt how to wrestle and I trained the younger guys and I figured out that the more you train someone the more you learn and the more you learn, the better you get.
That’s how I got better and better and better but also I had good guidance from different people, Jake being the primary individual.
That’s it for part one. In the second and last part of the interview, we’ll talk about DDP Yoga, his time in WCW, what he thinks about the product and more from the only and only, Diamond Dallas Page. BANG!
