Diamond Dallas Page reflects on his final match being under the AEW umbrella.
Diamond Dallas Page got a late start in the world of professional wrestling. By the time he was a major star, he was already in his late 30s. By the time he won the WCW World Championship, he was already 43 years old. Despite this, Diamond Dallas Page was in the ring twenty years later for AEW at the promotions one-and-only Bash at the Beach event.
Diamond Dallas Page teamed with QT Marshall and Dustin Rhodes in a losing effort against Maxwell Jacob Friedman and The Butcher and The Blade.
Reflecting on this match with Sean Ross Sapp, Diamond Dallas Page says he considers Cody Rhodes to be like a nephew and personally asked Cody Rhodes for the opportunity to have a match when he found out that All Elite Wrestling was going to be on TNT, the former home of World Championship Wrestling
"Well, Cody is like my nephew. We’re super close since he was twelve years old. When he went to AEW and of course it was him and the Young Bucks and Kenny that really put that all in together, too, and of course Adam Page, too. He was part of that group of guys that really put it together. But Cody was the cat who really was booking at that time. All In was all his. He did it all from the backstage to the production meetings to everything. If he never got to do it again, he got to do what his old man did. But then it turned into something bigger than that," Page said.
"Then I find out they’re gonna be on TNT. So I go over to him and I tell him, ‘Listen, this is gonna be on TNT. I gotta do a match. I gotta get out there, do more than.’ We’re catching a buzz, we’re drinking, and having a few beers. Then the next day I called him back ‘cause I’m thinking about my shoulders and my knees and my back. Feel pretty good, but Diamond Cutters every time is on this shoulder, you know? I said, ‘I think I overshot my load last night. Let’s just put that on the shelf.’ So I let it go for a couple of months and then it came down to January, right? So I tabled it and then now it’s coming into 2020," DDP said.
If DDP could wrestle in the 2020s, he would be able to say he's wrestled across six decades, beginning in the 1970s. Diamond Dallas Page even has the clippings to show that he wrestled in 1979.
"Someone sends my brother-in-law, Paul, this clipping. I wrestled when I was 23. You see that right there? Can you see where it says Handsome Dallas Page? I’m second on the card and this is my second match ever, bro. Look up at the top, what year was that? ’79. Man, I wrestled in the seventies. In ’89 when I was working for Dusty Rhodes in Florida Championship wrestling. I wrestled one day, and it’s on YouTube, you can find it, me and Dick Slater. I’m making up shit as I go along. I know enough from watching and being a fan, plus being in the ring for three months back when I was a kid. So I wrestled once in the 80’s. I had the 90’s, the 00’s. So 70, 80, 90, 00 and then the teens when I was in there, so if I wrestle in 2020 I’ll have six decades that I’ve wrestled."
For Diamond Dallas Page, he wanted the opportunity to say that he wrestled across six separate decades, and luckily for him, AEW afforded him that opportunity to make history.
"I do have a vision of me hitting at least one Diamond Cutter at 70. I’m gonna be sixty-six April 5. That’s something we’ll see. I’ll cross that bridge when we get there. I told Cody, ‘I’ll have six decades. I’ve gotta do it.’ The big thing I really wanted to do, which was in the promo that I was doing before MJF—who I love—came out. If you had told me nineteen years ago that DDP would have been back on TNT with a company called AEW, I’d have to say you were smoking crack. It all came to fruition," he said.
"I hadn’t been in a ring at that point, in a ‘match’ match—Diamond Cutters are a different animal. I can do those standing on my head. My shoulder hates it now, but the bottom line is I can do that anywhere at any time. But to do a match and go in for a comeback, and make it look good, and then he says, ‘At the end, you go off the top rope.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know about that one.’ But there I am. That is my last move ever as of right now. That’s kind of crazy," he said.
As of right now, Diamond Dallas Page is pretty sure that this was his last match and he is content with where he is at in his career.
"I’ve done the stem cells three times now. They’re helping. I’m in ridiculous shape. But I’m still sore, man. I just can’t imagine. All my work was really between thirty-five and forty-nine. Now I did some stuff after that, but it wasn’t big stuff. I just can’t imagine what these kids today are doing to their bodies. Like Darby Allin is one of my very good friends and he does the program, five / six days a week as part of what he does. He’s very serious about the maintenance of his body. But I was down to his house, he has this show that’s coming out on TNT or TBS, one of them, and it’s called Darby’s day off. I was there as I watched him, in a jeep, build a ramp and jump over his house and crash into these little trailers. That’s what he does. All the abuse that he puts on his body, God, I just can’t imagine him and the Young Bucks and the Lucha Brothers. It’s all of them," Page said.
Diamond Dallas Page also spoke about Bryan Danielson and the work that Bryan put in using a hyperbaric chamber in order to once again be cleared to be a professional wrestler.
"Bryan Danielson. I think Bryan Danielson today is the best in the world. I don’t think anybody, and it’s incredible that they made him retire because the first time was because of the brain damage as far as the concussions. The reason why you see Bryan back in the ring again because he went in using a hyperbaric chamber. A hyperbaric chamber where he gets over twelve PSI and this one right here is fifteen PSI. Every single morning when I get up, I get in this. What that is, the chamber takes you to forty feet below sea level and then you’re breathing in pure oxygen, those two containers on the end, they’re making oxygen. When he came back, the first thing I was at Mania. I asked, ‘How’d you get back here? Hyperbaric chamber, right?’ He said, ‘Yeah, how’d you know that?’ I go, ‘Dude, I got one of my own.’ Because I want to take care of all the damage that I’ve done to my brain. My brain, I had everything tested. I’m talking about MRI on my brain, everything. They said my brain is normal for someone in their forties and I’m in my sixties. That’s all I need. I don’t need better," Page concluded
These days, Diamond Dallas Page is largely involved with Sportskeeda Wrestling and had a lot to say about the current state of wrestling during their 2021 Sportskeeda Wrestling Awards.
You can also catch Diamond Dallas Page on Guardians of Justice on Netflix.