Eric Bischoff and DDP Discuss WWE’s Input on Their Hall of Fame Speeches

– Eric Bischoff and Diamond Dallas Page discussed their experiences at the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony on the latest episode of Bischoff on Wrestling. You can check out the full audio and highlights from them below:

Bischoff on his speech at the Hall of Fame Ceremony: “You know me, I don’t like to rehearse too much. It takes the edge off if I do. I didn’t even want to share the script, by the way. Hats off to WWE for giving all of us the freedom to go out there and say what we wanted to say from our hearts. It must have been Thursday that they finally came to me and said, “Look, the truck would really like to see a script because if you’re going to reference people that are in the audience they want to make sure they have cameras there to capture them.” I went, “Ughhhh…” I was so afraid I was going to give them my outline of what I wanted to say and they were going to come back to me with notes (laughs). I didn’t want to deal with it.”

Page on his speech: “You’re right, it can go that way and for me they asked me like the day before. I walked up to Fonz, who is my writer, like literally the afternoon before. Thursday afternoon. He said, “D, you wanna get together so we can go over the speech? So I can help you with it?” I’m like, “Fonz, do you really think I don’t have this bitch written anyway?” He said, “Of course you do but what are you looking at?” I said, “Twenty.” I knew in my mind it was like twenty-six or twenty-seven minutes but I am going to shave some stuff off. I wasn’t going to tell them that! I told him twenty and he said, “Aw, D, they don’t really like you to go over fifteen.” I said, “Fifteen!” I was panicking in my head. I said, ‘Ok, I’ll do it.” I stayed up til four o’clock with my family. Kimberly came in, my sisters came in, my family was there and some friends of mine. We went to dinner and I said I had to leave to write my thing. At about four o’clock in the morning I finally got a handle on it. How I was going to do it and honor the people I wanted to honor. It becomes ten o’clock and I start in on it again. Fonz called me around twelve o’clock and he says, ‘Listen man, I just want you to know I talked to the producers. You’re Diamond Dallas Page, bro. You’re a Hall of Famer. It’s your night. If you wanna do twenty do twenty. If you wanna do twenty-five do twenty-five.’ I was like, ‘Awesome.’ I knew I was going to be under the number they wanted but they didn’t care. I got nothing but mad props from Stephanie and Shane and even Vince gave me the, ‘Good job.’ Which we all know means a lot.”