DDP talks about wrestling with taped-up ribs in WCW.
There was a time in WCW, perhaps the most notable time in his career, where Diamond Dallas Page consistently wrestled with his ribs taped up. After a while, this became another part of his everyman persona.
Reflecting on this portion of his career in an interview with Sean Ross Sapp, Diamond Dallas Page says the entire reason he began taping up his ribs, to begin with is that Randy Savage would drop right on his ribs when he nailed his signature flying elbow smash.
"It's funny because I literally was pissing blood for thirteen out of fifteen weeks and it was because Randy was dropping that elbow across me. He lands right on your ribs. I was like, ‘Randy, can you just land a little lower and land on my stomach?’ That was a pay-per-view, the second one, he was going to go over in, where Randy hit me with the belt. Scott gave me his finish and then Randy came off the top and gave me and he landed on my face that time," Page said.
"If you see it, they were screaming, ‘Go home! Go home!’ ‘Cause when you get to three hours and one second, it’s the next program," he continued. "So if you’re not done, like Goldberg and my match at Halloween Havoc because Hulk and Warrior went forty minutes. So it ate up all our time. Well, we got out there to lockup, it went to three hours and a third of the country didn’t see it. That’s why it played on Nitro the next night. So on that match with Randy, you’ll see Scott finally raise Randy’s hand and I go to sit up and I lay back down. It goes to black."
DDP reflected on being knocked out by Macho Man Randy Savage at the Great American Bash 1997 and the backstage confrontation that nearly surfaced following his realization that he was knocked out.
"Next thing I know I’m walking backstage and I stated to my wife Kimberly, I stopped, I looked down, I go, ‘Did I just wrestle?’ She’s like, ‘What?’ I go, ‘Is it Nitro? Did I just wrestle?’ She goes, ‘Stop it, Page. You’re scaring me.’ I go, ‘What the fuck? What happened? Am I wrestling? What’s happening?’ She goes, ‘No, no, no. It’s the Great American Bash. You just wrestled Randy Savage. Oh, God. What happened?’ What I did, I sat up again like the Undertaker, came to my feet, they’re facing that way. I come to my feet behind them, they turn around and see me as I’m stepping back and I fall through the ropes to the floor and give them both the finger and walked down the aisle and here we are."
"I’m like, ‘Oh, no.’ That’s fighting in the backwoods. You don’t do that," Page said. "That’d be like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone all going boom-boom-boom-boom and you pull a Tony Montana and you come out with Scarface, ‘Ahh, you can’t kill me!’ He could do that, he was a star. But you get shot, you go down and you die. You take a belt and two finishes—especially those finishes—you don’t get up. They kicked that door in, man, and I have a table in front of me. I was like, ‘I don’t remember anything! I was knocked out!’ They were like, [barking noises]. I go, ‘You really think I would do that?’ [barking noises]. I threw the table and go, ‘Let’s go. You knocked me out.’ [barking noises] and they walked out. The next day, boy, my face was like a Chipmunk, man."
Ultimately, Diamond Dallas Page credits that trilogy of matches with Randy Savage for putting him on the map. their rivalry ended at Halloween Havoc 1997 in a Las Vegas Sudden Death Match.
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.
