Exclusive with Diamond Dallas Page: Hulk Hogan recognised my potential ‘he has the ability to draw huge money with me’, Vince McMahon taught me to walk away, No-one believed in themselves more than Cody Rhodes

Speaking to EscapistMagazine.com, wrestling legend Diamond Dallas Page opened up about what the official WWE video games have done for wrestling, his relationships with Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan, and why risk-taking Cody Rhodes is an inspiration.

Read the full interview below.

Q: Do you think that wrestling video games have helped keep legends like you in front of younger fans?

Diamond Dallas Page: “Absolutely video games have, and YouTube and the network. Peacock paid $5 billion to be able to use it [the library of old wrestling footage]. And it’s vast and it has everything. But one of the main things is WCW and WWF, or WWE’s Monday Night Wars. Like, we have our own section.”

Q: What do you think of the current WWE game?

DDP: “WWE 2K25 is so realistic. If you’re playing as me or Jade [Cargill], she looks exactly like that, it’s amazing. I can’t wait to see what they do when AI becomes involved [to increase the realism] because it will pretty much be us. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing.”

Q: What did Hulk Hogan mean to you?

DDP: “I was walking up the stairs to get on the bus, and I heard, ‘Diamond!’. Hulk always called me Diamond. I always called him Hulk. He said, ‘come on down here’ and Erci Bischoff was in his locker room. And he said, ‘Listen, I know you two guys are boys, ‘but you need to start doing something with him’. Bischoff wasn’t the guy in control. He was one of the guys on the booking committee back then. Hulk said, ‘Because if it’s not this year or next year, but somewhere down the line, I believe this guy right here has the ability to draw huge money with me.”

“I tell everyone, never underestimate the power someone gives you by believing in you. More importantly, never underestimate the power you give yourself by believing in you. And there is no one in this modern era of guys who believed in himself more than Cody Rhodes. He left. And I don’t know how much money he was making back then, but I would bet it was somewhere around a half a million dollars a year, when a half a million dollars meant a lot of money back then. We’re talking about ten years ago, whatever it was. For him to have the guts to believe in himself, for his wife, Brandy, to have the guts to believe in her husband that much, having no guarantee of anything, and for his life to turn out the way it has, Nothing sets a better example than never underestimate the power you give yourself by believing in you.“

Q: Could you give us an anecdote that just sums up what Vince McMahon was like to you?

DDP: “No, I’m a positive guy. But Vince did make me understand the importance of never being afraid to walk away from the table. That’s what he did for me.”