Video: Rich Eisen Show
It was the summer of 2014 when I got an email from one of the seemingly thousands of PR firms trying to book their experts on to talk radio shows around the country. Normally I just hit 'delete' because it's usually not relevant to what I'm talking about--at the time, I hosted a long-running sports talk show in Eau Claire, and I received solicitation on everything from pharmaceuticals to politics. Probably good topics for other hosts. As would any PR firm emailing me to talk about yoga.
Imagine my surprise then at seeing that the interview subject would be freaking Diamond Dallas Page. I immediately forgot about yoga and remembered one of the greatest wrestling matches I got to watch as a kid: Halloween Havoc between Goldberg and DDP in 1998.
(Ignore the frame, but the entire match is here):
It took me about 15 seconds to reach out to the PR firm to book the interview a week out. For a sports talk show in a city like Eau Claire, this was a pretty neat guest to have on. I usually stuck to local subjects, but this was something I was genuinely excited for. At the time, I was running all over town getting in shape, and this seemed like a neat new challenge to take on to do something other than run half marathons and play flag football--DDP Yoga. So I had two angles to take into the interview: my unbridled geekery and my desire to learn more about yoga.
I did this interview on June 20, 2014--almost three years ago. It's one of the best moments of my career, as it was actually one of the very last shows I hosted in Eau Claire, ending a ten-year run. Here it is, on the now-defunct Sports Radio 1400 in Eau Claire, my 22-minute (!) interview with Diamond Dallas Page on DDP Yoga and that 1998 Halloween Havoc match with Goldberg:
And for fun, here's DDP trying to play Pokemon Go. (Warning: NSFW language)