Diamond Dallas Page says he should have walked away when Vince McMahon pitched the now-infamous stalker angle.
Diamond Dallas Page was one of the only success stories to come out of the Monday Night War on the WCW side of things. Having started wrestling at a later age, when Diamond Dallas Page won the WCW Championship at Spring Stampede 1999, it cemented his legacy as one of the top Superstars out of that era.
In 2001, Diamond Dallas Page was one of these few WCW main eventers to cross over to WWE. Immediately, he began a feud with The Undertaker, allowing for a clash of two worlds. However, the backstory to that angle would be that Diamond Dallas Page was the stalker of The Undertaker's then-wife Sara.
Speaking on The Angle Podcast, DDP openly stated that he wishes would have walked away from WWE having declined the idea. Instead, Diamond Dallas Page was more interested in a program with The Rock as they both referred to themselves as “The People's Champion.”
“Vince McMahon taught me to never be afraid to walk away from the table. What I should’ve done was got up. When Vince said I want you to stalk The Undertaker’s wife and he’s looking across from one of the most beautiful women ever, my first ex-wife, I was there to be a part of the team. In WCW I fought for everything. If I were in the WCW mindset and Vince said we want you to stalk Undertaker’s wife, I would’ve looked at him, looked at her, looked back at him, and said Vince are you looking at my wife? I’m going to stalk some other cat's wife when everybody knows she’s my wife? What I should’ve done was shook everyone’s hands and said, ‘I love the idea, but not for DDP. When you want to do people’s champion vs. people’s champion (DDP vs. The Rock) call me.’”
Diamond Dallas Page would eventually become a WWE Hall of Famer, he would recall the experience of getting the phone call and taking his rightful place in WWE’s hall for the greatest in sports entertainment.
“Well for starters I didn’t have any idea. They let you know either in January or February and this was in October and they were doing a video on me. WWE wanted to bury WCW when we got there. It was business, it wasn’t me personally. I took the brunt of it, but I knew if I just shut my mouth and didn’t complain like so many other guys do and put down the company. They are going to have to put me in that Hall of Fame or something. How could you not? No one’s ever had my story. When we started kicking their ass is when my career blew up. I’m still tight with everyone there. Triple H and I go way back. When I got his call I was like hey bro because I put a call in for him. I thought he was just calling me back. He started talking about my career and my work ethic and at some point, I started thinking, is this that call? And I don’t want to say it is because I don’t know, but they’re filming me and at some point, he says we’re going to put you in. Dusty Rhodes said, D there are only 2 things that are real in our business, 1 is winning your first world championship title and 2 is that hall of fame ring.”
DDP never made much of a career by stalking The Undertaker's wife but he is one of the few who defended the WWE European Championship successfully at WrestleMania, defeating Christian in 2002.
Thanks to Joey Karni for sending the above quotes. You can check out the full podcast at this link.