Eric Bischoff Recalls the Night Diamond Dallas Page Burst Onto the Scene in WCW: “I’ll Keep Pounding This Drum for as Long as I Can”

Diamond Dallas Page is one individual whom the WCW fans and pro wrestling fans will remember forever. In his professional wrestling career that spanned over two decades, he had competed against several top stars and had been involved in many interesting segments that kept the crowd at the edge of their seat.

One such segment happened in 1997 when Diamond Dallas Page faked joining the nWo. During that time, the nWo had established themselves as one of the major forces in WCW.

Following DDP’s match on the January 13th episode of WCW Nitro, The Outsiders (Scott Hall and Kevin Nash) came out. They asked him to join the nWo by offering DDP a nWo shirt.

It looked like DDP had accepted their offer of joining them. However, moments after he wore the nWo shirt, he hit Scott Hall with a Diamond Cutter. Soon after, Diamond Dallas Page left through the crowd and got a tremendous reception.

Recently, during an episode of the 83 Weeks Podcast, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson talked about this famous segment.

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Eric Bischoff talks about Diamond Dallas Page going into the crowd

During the episode, Conrad also noted that Diamond Dallas Page said someone gave him the tweak of leaving through the crowd following this segment.

Soon after that, Eric Bischoff said, “That was going back to trying to get DDP to get rid of all the ridiculous gimmicks. You know, he looked like the dollar gimmick store whenever he came to the ring and having that conversation with him and getting him to shed all that stuff and become what he really is, which is a blue collar guy.”

“And I’ll keep pounding this drum for as long as I have breath. With young talent, developing talent, even some established talent, the truer you can be to who you really are, the more authentic you can be,” he added.

Bischoff further added that DDP went back to being the blue-collar guy that he was in New Jersey and that is what connected. He admitted that going into the crowd was one of the key components of that.

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