Former pro wrestling superstar Diamond Dallas Page knows how to inflict a beating, and what it's like to take one.
But at 67, the brawler known for his flashy moves and golden locks is now turning his sights toward helping others recover from physical and mental ailments, including fellow wrestling legend Jake "The Snake" Roberts, who struggled with depression, pain and substance abuse in retirement.
Roberts' transformation was featured The Resurrection of Jake the Snake, a documentary film that revealed how Page spent a year helping him recover using fitness and accountability plans he helped develop.
Page, a three-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion and WWE Hall of Famer, tells The Messenger that his goal was to help his former mentor believe in himself again, even when Roberts actively fought against it.
"What I did with wrestling was super cool, but back then I wasn't trying to prove people wrong — I was more proving me right," says Page, a late bloomer whose pro wrestling career didn't take off until his mid-30s. "And what I learned during those years laid the foundation for how I'm helping people today."
While working with Roberts in 2012, Page also took in Scott Hall, who wrestled for years under the moniker "Razor Ramon" before forming the New World Order, a famed WCW faction, with Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan in the 1990s.
The former wrestlers lived in a residence that Page called the "Accountability Crib" near his home in Atlanta.
And like Roberts, Hall had suffered from addiction and persistent pain from injuries experienced throughout his career.
"Here's what no one can argue — you can't fake gravity," Page, the founder of DDP Yoga, says of the toll a wrestling career can have on a performer. "Wrestling is an aggressive, brutal, intense, friggin' ballet show that tours. We're trying not to kill each other, but it's also not checkers."
The wrestling industry can also be like a speeding train: if you can't keep up, it will leave you behind.
"We work over 270 days a year in a ring, not only the televised nights, and Jake worked 90 straight days at one point," Page says, before pausing. "Ninety straight days."
"Know why so many guys died so young?" he continues. "They were pilled up all the time. How are you supposed to keep going?"
Even today, Page says the schedule and immense pressure performers face is "still so f—ing brutal."
"At the end of those 270 days, there will be broken necks," he explains. "There will be broken backs. There will be torn rotator cuffs, biceps, pecks, and ACLs. The only guys that compare to the physical brutality we put our bodies through would be linemen in the NFL and bull riders."
That's why when Roberts and Hall joined him, Page introduced them to DDP Yoga, a system he developed after he took up yoga following a back injury that threatened his WCW career.
Page started the program by using his diet and physical fitness knowledge — which he used previously to pack on muscle to face the likes of "Hollywood" Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage in the ring — and integrated it with what he learned from yoga.
As Resurrection showed, Page's program helped Roberts and Hall regain strength after years of abuse and inactivity, and their journey culminated with the pair being inducted into the 2014 WWE Hall of Fame.
"See, when you can tell yourself the truth, you can be better today than you were yesterday, and you can be better tomorrow than you are today," Page says of the mentality he tried to instill in them.
"When you can do that, and you are truthful with yourself, you won't have to find discipline, discipline will find you."
Hall later died of a heart attack in March 2022 at age 63, and the community often credits Page with helping him live fulfilling final years.
"It was very tough," Page says of Hall's death.
Since its inception, Page has expanded DDP Yoga into an online store, an app, and a mail-order DVD line. There are also dozen of DDPY instructors around the country.
Other wrestlers, including Chris Jericho, A.J. Styles, and Marcus "Buff" Bagwell, have sought his services. (Both Jericho, 52, and Styles, 46, are active performers today.)
But Page says his motivation comes from the everyday people who have taken up his program and have had life-changing results.
One of those people includes Arthur Boorman, a disabled Gulf War veteran who regained his running ability after following Page's program, then known as Yoga for Regular Guys.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9FSZJu448[/embed]
Before the transformation, Boorman's weight had reached nearly 300 pounds, and he needed knee braces, a back brace, two walking canes and a wheelchair to move around.
A video of Boorman's weightloss journey went viral and has since been viewed over 108 million times on YouTube.
Another video featured Vance Hinds, who lost 200 pounds in a year while following Page's program. It's been viewed over 101 million times on the DDP Yoga YouTube channel.
It's stories like theirs that Page says make the effort he's put into the program worthwhile — even when he was unsure if it would catch on.
"Everyone can become disciplined," he says. "Discipline is making yourself do what you need to, whether you like doing it or not. You don't just change your life when you can do that. You start owning your life."
"If you look at what I did in wrestling," he says, "it's all about thinking outside the box, and constantly reinventing myself. They can do that, too."
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