Heated Conversations with Booker T
Episode 195: Diamond Dallas Page
Release Date: January 24th, 2019
Recap By: James Hayes
DIRECT LINK TO LISTEN/DOWNLOAD
Booker T and Co-host Brad Gilmore welcome you to the show!
The guys are in great spirits. ROW on The Rise happened and it was an “A-1 show”. Booker says. “I have not had that much fun working with another company ever.”
“Mercedes Martinez in the main event. The first time I ever got a chance to see Mercedes Martinez live and in living color. And I must say Kylie Rae stepped up to the plate, but Mercedes Martinez is definitely on another level. And I gotta give her huge props for showing up here to Reality of Wrestling. She is always welcome to Reality of Wrestling,” Booker says.
Brad also gives Kylie Rae big props for the match. Booker is proud of her and loves the fact that he is finally being giving his respect as a trainer.
Brad says, “Everyone on the card, because I didn’t know a lot of the names when you sit and watch, and what’s so great is I only did a couple matches on commentary, so I got to sit in the crowd and see Big Momma. For the first time, I got to see a wrestling show from the crowd at the World Gym Arena. I gotta say. Not a bad seat in the house. To see these people put on a show. Those women out there they gave you some wrestling.”
Booker says he will definitely do ROW on the RISE 2. Booker says he is enjoying the women’s evolution.
(The women are just killing it everywhere you look in pro wrestling.)
Diamond Dallas Page Interview
Booker: We got a special guest in the house tonight, ladies and gentlemen welcome to Heated Conversations my friend, my homie, my comrade DDP. What’s going on, Dallas?
Dallas: I’m changing the world. Right now I am absolutely unstoppable.
Booker: That’s the word on the street, you on the loop, on the grind. I hear about you being, not just all around the country, but all around the world as far as DDP Yoga. You got this big million dollar contest going on. People can still sign up if I’m correct, until the end of the month, and try to get in on this million dollars. Imma tell ya when you tell someone it’s some money, that’s like a reward. People start calling tips and hotlines. Talk to me about the new contest.
Dallas: We named it after a new book, “Positively Unstoppable: The Art Of Owning It.” No one understands owning IT more than you do. I’m preaching to the choir. For the Positively Unstoppable Challenge, I wanted to… We’ve had so many crazy transformations over the last 10-12 years I been doing this. I was looking for… let’s give people an opportunity throughout the United States and Canada… Actually, the only place you can’t do it in Canada is Quebec. It’s a contest, a chance to win a million dollars, and they have some kind of rule. We couldn’t figure that rule out, but it’s everywhere in North America, except Quebec. What we are looking at is the two best transformations physically, and I’m talking about whether it’s your… In fact, it’s not that we are looking for someone to lose like a hundred pounds, two hundred pounds because it’s only 16 weeks. It’s only 4 months. It only goes to May 31st. So, what we are looking for is someone who has the best transformation in 16 weeks, but also the best mental transformation. What does that mean? We’re gonna have a questionnaire that people have to fill out. They also have to write an essay. I’ve turned myself into a pretty decent writer. If it was back in the day, when I was 30, I was reading and writing at a third-grade level.”
Booker laughs and laughs.
Dallas: Bottom line, you can have someone write it for you, ‘What did you learn out of this? How did you transform your body and your mind.’ We got literally thousands of people signed up. And when it’s all said and done we have a private company that we hired to do this for us. We have so many people that we’ve come to know and care about. Me and my business partner, Steve, wanted to pull ourselves away from that. Let’s give this company the chance to give us the finalist. And we get it down to two finalists. We fly them to Atlanta, if they are not from here, we are gonna put them up at the Accountability Crib.
Booker: Let me tell you. Getting put up at the crib… I have been there.
Brad: It’s nice.
Booker: It’s like getting put up in your own little space. It’s like your own little house. That right there, I can tell the listeners …That is a treat in itself. I got a chance to hang out in the DDP suite.
Brad: The big baller suite.
Booker: It’s got all the bells and whistles. The television comes down out of the ceiling.
Dallas laughs.
Booker: It’s got all the memorabilia… the Ric Flair days, all the way to up to today. So, I’m gonna tell ya right now just living in that room is worth signing up for this whole deal. But, go ahead I didn’t mean to cut you off.
Dallas: We turned that place into an Air B&B. Anybody who wants to stay in the Scott Hall suite, or DDP, the Jake The Snake… It’s online. If it’s open you can stay there. We just opened it up for the Super Bowl.
The guys get excited at the prospect of hanging out there.
Booker: It’s gon be hot up in there. Continue about Totally Unstoppable… my bad Positively Unstoppable.
Dallas: But it is totally unstoppable. We fly them in, put them up at the crib, and then we take them to the Performance Center. You figure this is gonna be around mid-January. All the contestants will come in June and July they are going to be going through them and breaking them down. Then it comes down to how much you document it. An example might be, Book let’s say you and me enter the contest, we both have 30 or 40 pounds to lose, but we lost the weight, our essay was amazing, but you were smart enough to take the pictures.
Booker: Document it.
Dallas: Like a newspaper. January 23rd you got the newspaper. There is the picture. You can prove this is the day I started. I didn’t do that… You are gonna be the finalist.
Booker: What I would do… Should I say?
Brad: I want to hear it.
Dallas: Tell me.
Booker: I would go online and look up Polaroid or get the old Polaroid camera and would get them to send me as many as they possibly could, and I would make a little book…
Brad: A flip book.
Booker: Like a slide show. And you could see it actually move. All the way up to… That’s a winner.
Dallas: Awesome.
Brad: Yeah.
Booker: Dallas, what drives you?
Dallas: I’m gonna be 63 in April. I’m doing a DDP workshop at Mania. It’s gonna be when we all do WrestleCon.
Booker: I’ll be there.
Dallas: In one of the big halls I’m gonna do a workshop. And you know I’m doing a birthday workshop. 65 will be here tomorrow I’m not planning for 65. I have a mentor named Ted Evans, he’s 84 I just saw him. Ted started with me at 68. He was all beat up but now he takes the class 5 days a week.
Booker: Wow.
Dallas: I look at him… I’m not preparing for 65 I’m preparing for 75, 85, 95. Maybe 105. I love being alive. I love helping people. Have you guys seen the latest transformation?
Booker: The guy that lost 400 pounds.
Brad: The DA.
Booker: Who hasn’t seen that, Dallas? I’m sure you got a big check from Youtube.
Dallas: 24 million people. 21 million saw it in 8 days. The story is so cool. September 4th I went on Joe Rogan. Right before Black Friday sale Jake goes on Rogan. Rogan and I, we text. I don’t bother him, but he always hits me back. When Jake was getting ready to do his show I sent him this text. Trying to look for it.
Dallas fumbles through his phone.
Brad: He’s reading through the text live.
Booker laughs.
Booker: That’s how we do it here.
Dallas: I told Rogan you might want to go to Amazon Prime and check out “The Ressurection of Jake The Snake” before he comes. He texted me the next day and said. ‘I’m watching the documentary now it’s f’n awesome’ I write back, ‘Thanks, bro. Labor of love.’ He goes, ‘It was fate, brother.’ And then he comes back the next day and says, ‘Jake was awesome. Epic story.’ Then it puts us into the whole holiday season. It took two weeks to get rid of it all. The day after that video we were on the front page on Reddit. At one point Vance was the number one video on Reddit.
Brad: People were inspired by that. When the movie came out my girlfriend, Farrah, didn’t know Jake the Snake as a wrestler. When ya’ll came down here, Dallas and Jake, to do the screening at the World’s Gym Arena she was so excited to meet Jake. Farrah was so excited to meet Jake, not because he was a wrestler, but because of his story.
Dallas: We have a new documentary coming out in 2019 called Relentless it’s about me blowing my back out to where we are today. Austin lived with me in 2004. I just split up with my lady. We were like the odd couple. Bottom line is he would see me working on the program and he’d go, ‘Let me get this right. You’re developing yoga for people who would not be caught dead doing yoga. I’m like, ‘Kinda’ He goes, ‘It’s never gonna work.’ Until he saw Arthur’s video take off. That’s when he thought. ‘Man. Maybe he’s onto something.’ It’s great because it wasn’t like he did not want to see me successful. he didn’t want to see me waste my time. He didn’t see it but I saw it.
Booker: Can you imagine what Shark Tank is thinking right now?
Brad: They passed up on quite the company.
Booker: We gotta get you out of here. How can people get in touch with DDP?
Dallas: Go to PositivilyUnstoppable.com. Want to know more about the program? Go to DDPYoga. Always a pleasure talking to you guys.
Booker: BANG! There it is. Dallas Page, Brad Gilmore, I’m Booker T, and we’ll see you next week.
https://twitter.com/realddp?lang=en
Vance’s transformation
Arthur’s transformation
Before the Final Bell:
Sasha and Ronda
Booker is excited for the Sasha versus Ronda match at Royal Rumble.
“People look at Ronda Rousey and look at her MMA background. Let’s forget about the MMA background for just one second and focus on just how well she has done in WWE. She’s done a Hell of a job. She has performed at a high level! She knows the three levels. Ricky Steamboat would be proud of Ronda Rousey. Steamboat would give her the stamp of approval as far as what she is doing in the ring. That’s from a professional,” Booker says.
Spoiler Alert!
Rousey tapped out Sasha after selling for most of the match. It was Ronda’s best match so far.
Spoiler over
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Overall Observations:
This was another short but sweet episode. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s always great to hear from Diamond Dallas, his positivity is contagious. Nothing extraordinary happens in this episode, but it was a brisk nice walk with Booker and Brad. These guys are always good company.
More like this, please.
See ya next week!
About James:
Based out of New York, James Hayes is an independent filmmaker and podcaster, currently working on a true crime series focused on African American crime. When he needs a break from the seriousness of true-crime he turns to pro wrestling. James has 27 years of following the sport. You can also find his wrestling editorials at http://www.twm.news/ And here is a link to his film credits https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2026980/, as well as His Twitter @JamesHa34395813.
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