Diamond Dallas Paige’s Debut In WWE

For this issue of Huge Crowd Reactions in Wrestling, we’re going back to the WWE debut of DDP (no, his appearance at WrestleMania VI does not count). After Vince McMahon and the WWE purchased World Championship Wrestling, they had a surplus of on-camera talent that they had to develop characters for. That included Diamond Dallas Paige. So, rather than go with The People’s Champ reputation that DDP had built up in WCW, Vince gave him a stalker gimmick.

Welcome back to Huge Crowd Reactions in Wrestling. This series is basically an excuse for us here at Pro Wrestling Stories to revel in some of the moments that made us lose our minds. We’re all pretty huge wrestling fans. We live for those huge crowd reactions. Even as at-home viewers, those are the moments we crave. We want to be on the edge of our seats, or even out of them entirely.

DDP Stalks Undertaker’s Wife

They ran creepy vignette after creepy vignette of someone watching Sara, The Undertaker’s wife. As a kid, I remember being genuinely scared. Was someone going to hurt Taker’s wife? Why are we seeing this? What’s happening? At my current age, however, I see a giant missed opportunity. DDP was, without a doubt, the best homegrown talent to come out of WCW. He had the most to offer, and VKM (Vincent Kennedy McMahon) could have truly shown his superiority over his former competition by taking this talent and helping it grow.

Instead, he slapped him with a death sentence.

The only saving grace is DDP’s reasoning. He went after Taker’s wife to make an impression. Similar to the idea of messing up the biggest and scariest guy in prison when you get there to develop a reputation, Diamond went after The Dead Man because he was the biggest, scariest dog in the WWE yard. He wanted Undertaker to make him famous, as you can see from the featured image.

It’s really crazy. Despite the rough gimmick and storyline, once Diamond Dallas Page takes off the mask, revealing himself to be the stalker, the crowd loses their minds. It’s definitely up there as one of the loudest WWE debuts you’ll ever see.

Click play and check it out!