DDP Recalls His Earliest Interactions With MJF

– On the latest edition of the DDP Snake Pit podcast, WWE Hall of Famer DDP discussed his earliest interactions with AEW star MJF after Cody Rhodes introduced him to DDP. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

DDP on Cody Rhodes introducing him to MJF: “Personally, Cody told me about him. When they were putting that crew together that was, you know, going to be the future of AEW, there were certain guys that Cody put his name on. I remember him telling me about him, and I was just listening in the beginning, you know? ‘Cause, there’s certain guys — Jake has it, I have it, Cody has it, we see certain people with talent maybe even before they do. Goldberg, I met Goldberg in a strip joint 5 years before he was ever ‘Goldberg.’ Back when he was just Bill Goldberg playing for The Falcons, I introduced him to Eric Bischoff. I was having such a good time with him, drinking and having a good time, I was like, ‘This guy’s one of us. He needs to be one of us.’ There are just certain times you see someone like that, and Cody, that’s how he explained it. You know, ‘This kid, he’s got heat. He knows how to use it, he knows how to turn it on.’

“And the thing that I loved about him, he was super respectful to me, but at the same time, he threw a little dig every once and a while just to f**k with you. But if you got in his face, he got real respectful. Yeah, to watch his embryonic stages of what he’s been doing in the business, it’s — I always talk about his commitment. It’s his commitment. Like, I heard Denzel Washington say this because I’m always on Instagram looking for inspirational stuff. But he says, ‘Without commitment, there is no start. Without consistency, there is no finish.’ It’s so powerful, and that’s what MJF has.”

DDP on MJF: “I can see the kid is going to be — you know what I mean? I see where he’s going now, and I saw him come out on AEW a few weeks ago and they had him in a throne chair. I literally thought to myself, and this is something and I’m calling you out right now, Friedman, because I had called him to touch base with him and he always calls me back. Well, it took a while but he did call me back. He said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m jammed up right now but let’s talk a little bit later.’ And then he didn’t call me back, so, Superstar, you owe me a phone call. But when I saw the throne, I thought, oh boy, it’s going to be hard when everybody’s telling you how great you are. It’s really hard to hold it down.”