Diamond Dallas Page Talks Botched Finish In Match Against Mark Starr
One of the highlights of Diamond Dallas Page’s WCW career, the night he declined the nWo’s offer to join the stable, started with a botched finish to a match just minutes earlier.
Page had a match with perennial WCW enhancement talent Mark Starr which would set up the segment where Scott Hall and Kevin Nash would invite Page to join the New World Order. Page won the match, but he did admit that he was upset heading into the match because the match was originally supposed to go 12 minutes, but got drastically shortened to just four minutes max.
The former WCW World Heavyweight Champion recently appeared on “The List & Ya Boy” podcast and talked about the match and why he was upset right before going to the ring.
“I actually had [Stone Cold Steve] Austin look at that match because they were letting me pick whatever I wanted for the very best of Nitro. I had a lot of influence, I could have put anything about myself in there and I go, ‘No I don’t want that’ or ‘I like that.’ That’s the moment right before the nWo comes out. I had some great matches with Mark because I would always give him a hell of a match even though I knew I was going over. I wanted to make him, but that night, they took us from 12 minutes to 10 minutes to eight minutes, and by the time we were ready to go out there, four minutes and I was so mad because I wanted to go out there and have a match with Mark. Terry Taylor tells me that and I cracked like, ‘Ah what the f*ck? Four minutes?!’ They tell me, ‘You go out there and beat him, tell him you got to go home fast. This is your night,’” DDP said.
Once both men got into the ring, the match went fine as scheduled until the finish where Starr was not properly in place to take DDP’s Diamond Cutter finisher. Page recalled the events that transpired in the match and where the finish went wrong.
“What happened was that I shot him to the turnbuckle, bank shot Diamond Cutter, which means he hits the buckle, I hit the rope, catch him and bang! Well, he hits the turnbuckle and I’m running the rope and I see him doing a Ric Flair, doing the face bump forward. What the f*ck are you doing? So I jumped in the air and probably caught him two feet off the ground, hit it perfectly and the place pops, but I didn’t hear that pop. I was like, ‘That’s not the way it was supposed to go.’ I said to Steve, ‘Steve what do you think about that?’ He tells me, ‘Well kid. A win’s a win. I’d keep it.’ Mark’s awesome. He’s a hell of a worker and he can go. I was more pissed that they cut the time,” DDP said.
“The List & Ya Boy” with Fightful owner Jimmy Van and Fightful managing editor Sean Ross Sapp can be seen live on Fightful.com and on YouTube live every Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET. Page’s comments can be seen in the episode above.
