Jimmy Wang Yang Recalls Meeting DDP As a Teen, How That led To His Wrestling

Jimmy Wang Yang says that an encounter with Diamond Dallas Page as a teenager helped lead to his in-ring career. The WWE alumnus has spent 27 years in the business, working on screen and as a producer for WWE among his runs with companies.

Yang recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet on Insight and discussed his early days. He recalled finding out that DDP lived in his area and how he ended up meeting Page while out ofr Halloween, plus more. You can see highlights below:

On his Wrestling School:

“[I live in] Hiram, Georgia, like, 20 minutes west of Atlanta. I have built a wrestling school in my backyard. I know you like backyard wrestling. I’m a backyard wrestler in my past. As a kid, I would have loved to have a ring in the backyard. I built a school, Yang’s Dojo, and it truly is backyard wrestling.”

On His Wrestling Fandom Growing Up:

“So that was pretty crazy. I was obsessed with wrestling in high school, the Monday Night Wars. The new generation would have hated me because I stalked. I did my research. I went everywhere. If I knew where they were going to be, I was there. In high school, I was so crazy about wrestling, and then everybody knew it. Some of the classmates were like, ‘Hey, Jimmy, we have a wrestler that lives in our neighborhood.’ I was like, ‘You do? Who?’ ‘We don’t really know, but he has a blonde mullet, and he goes “Bang!”‘ I said, ‘DDP lives in your neighborhood!?’ Oh, my God, this is crazy! I was like I gotta find him. I was on the internet and stuff. It’s like, DDP’s real name is Page Falkinburg? Okay. I know he lives in this neighborhood. So me and my friends, we came up with the greatest plan ever. Halloween was coming up. It was like, Okay, we know he lives there. So this is our plan. We’re all dressing up as wrestlers, and we’re going to go to every single house until we find him. So I dress up Sting, paint face, all that kind of stuff, and friends, DDP and Ric Flair. Was awesome. So it’s like we went to every single house, we knocked on the door, and Kimberly Page opens the door. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“She’s like, ‘Oh, you guys are so cute, I gotta go get Page for this.’ I was like, what? He’s here? No way! Page was so awesome that night, he came to the door. He’s like, ‘Bang!’ We’re going crazy. So then he said, Come on in, kids, let’s take some pictures. Put my friend in the diamond cutter. My friend tried to get out, got a diamond cutter on the floor. I was like, that is so awesome. Then we left, and then Eric Bischoff drove down the street and he saw us, ‘DDP sucks nWo rules!’ And it was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s Eric Bischoff.’ Then I forgot my book bag at Page’s house. So I went back down, and I knocked on the door. Said, Hey, Page, I forgot my book bag. Oh, come on, get it. I grabbed it, I turned around and said hey, DDP, I know how to wrestle. I wrestle in high school, and I do backyard wrestling. And he’s like, ‘Kid, that’s awesome. When you get old enough, come back and I’ll take you down to the Power Plant.’ That sentence changed my life, because I didn’t think I was gonna be able to become a professional wrestler or anything. And DDP said, Hey, kid, you can get old enough come back, I’ll take you. I was like, Oh, my God, that’s crazy.”