DDP Says Austin Popped Hard For His Hall of Fame Induction

– Diamond Dallas Page was the latest guest on the Steve Austin Show. You can check it out here. Some highlights are below:

On helping train guys that are about to enter the NFL Draft: “Today we were just talking about earlier, my good buddy Ice Train, who wrestled with us back in the 90’s with us, he’s here. Not only does he have his own security business where he has a bunch of big brothers, where he not only does protection for Jack Nicholson to 50 Cent, he’s big time, especially for these fights in Vegas, but he also trains. You know he’s a 700 lb bencher from back in the day. He trains a lot of these kids on strength training— who are going into the combine with guys that are going into the NFL, so he brings them here with me at the Performance Center on Mondays. Mondays are his DDP Yoga App days and it has helped him with not just lean up, but also tying his ligaments and tendons together, especially for the strength training that he still does. He’s way down on the big bench, but his goal is to do 225lbs 75 times, he did 62 times the other day and he’s 52 years old. Things are going really well. I’m coming off of an amazing last couple of months.”

On where he was when Triple H called him about the WWE Hall of Fame: “Let me take you back bro because I didn’t share it with you either until later and you were with one of the first people I shared it with, but I was filming ‘Positively Living’, the biopic that they did for my DVD, which I am home, at my sister’s house, my mom has special little quarters there living among the canal. It’s my home away from home and the WWE is interviewing my mom and sister, best friend Gary Rossi, who has been my best friend since we were 12 years old and my wife, interviewed everybody. Then they went on a walk while talking to me and going among the streets where I grew up on down on the boardwalk with my French Bulldog. I was at my good friend’s Linda, who has a bar. My producer, Mike handed me the phone and said that the boss wanted to talk with me. I can’t hear who it was so I asked who it was and on the other line, so he said it was Triple H and I said, hey, Paulie! Then he starts talking about my career because he was there when I went from Manager to wrestler and I know he was thinking, what is this guy doing? He’s 35 1/2 and Hunter was 22, so what was I thinking? Then he starts talking about the Power Plant, I stopped thinking about what I was supposed to talk to him about because I was thinking, maybe this is maybe ‘that call’ and man, I look around with the cameras are filming me and then he starts saying some really strong stuff to me, praising me and then I realized it was that call and it choked me up when I realized what it was. It took my breath away, which is still does now. It just felt really amazing as he said for putting me in. I couldn’t really talk except for saying that I love him. They showed another clip because we kept talking and I just said that I wished Dusty was here because he also was super tight with Dusty too. I got off the phone and handed it back to Mike and he goes, so what did you think? I go, what do I think? I think I wish you were filming him because he was saying some amazing stuff. He goes, yeah, we were filming him also. Triple H had said to Mike that morning that they were going to tell me today because he wanted the moment captured. They told me that they had been wanting to capture that moment with the boys forever, but how could you not know we have a camera in your face, so I was like one in a million, so I was just happy it was just me, what it means to me and all of us.”

On Steve Austin’s reaction to DDP’s Hall of Fame induction: “I said, hey, by the way, I just wanted to let you know that I was going in. You said you’re going in? I said yeah, I’m going into the Hall of Fame and you just started screaming, yeah! Hell yeah! I’m so happy for you! Like, you popped. You were screaming and had the best reaction out of everybody. You’re going in man! Long overdue man! I’m so happy for you! You were as happy as I was, and that meant a lot to me.”

On whether he expected to be entering the Hall of Fame: “You know, part of me said I know I am a Hall of Fame because no one had done it like I had done it, which I knew in my soul that I did, but I know that I never really produced what I should have produced when I got the call to go to WWE and it was so short, then once I started seeing how they were bringing people in, like when they brought Scott Hall in, they brought him in as Razor Ramon. That was what was featured. Some of the nWo stuff was there, but not really, Razor Ramon was in. So if you do it like that, people would say to me if I was ever bummed out about my run in the WWF? I was like, who did Michael Jordan play for, the Wizards or the Bulls? I played for WCW when we were killing it and that was when I was on top. I was really the only self-made WCW guy made at that time. Goldberg started to come on strong as hell. By the way, did those guys have a great match at WrestleMania? I mean, it’s the greatest 4-5 minute match, I was jumping up and down.”

On motivating Goldberg before his WrestleMania 33 match: “I was at where the party is by that time. I was at the hotel and had my own group of people with me. I was jumping up and down selling like a fanboy because I was so happy for Bill [Goldberg] because I had went and seen him twice throughout the day and both times I can see Billy pulling himself down sometimes and I just shook him up, like, dude you’re Bill Goldberg. I don’t want to see that and he goes, yeah maybe, and I go, no, you’re going to kill it! You will deliver dude and I would watch his shoulders roll back and see his shoulders pick up. A couple of hours went by and I went to see his wife and she goes, please go back and talk to him one more time. I went back there and hit him hard, but he did great.”