Michael ‘Venom’ Page reveals original ‘big plan’ for Undertaker-inspired walkout at UFC 299
Michael “Venom” Page had even grander plans for his UFC debut.
On Saturday, Page made his long-awaited UFC debut, winning a unanimous decision over Kevin Holland in the featured main card bout at UFC 299. And true to form, Page got the show started before he even began fight with a walkout straight from the WWE’s Undertaker. But apparently he had even bigger plans that the UFC ultimately shot down.
“I had a big plan [laughs],” Page told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “I’m such a creative mind and I just can’t turn that side of me off. So when I envision the fight day, it’s not just my opponent and how I’m going to beat my opponent ... it’s from the walkout to how I leave. So I had an idea, me and my family got together, we’re talking about it, we’ve got the track made, we’re going over it, okay, let me present it to the UFC now.
“They took a little bit of time. I don’t know what they’re process is but it took a little bit of time to get back to me and then it was like, no, we can’t do that. And they actually said no to the track as well, initially. We kept pushing back, pushing back, managed to get the track cleared which was great. Then I was like, OK, I’m going to have to do everything myself.
“For me, it still worked out and I still really enjoyed the walkout, but genuinely, if I was able to do what I wanted to do, it would have been the best walkout that anybody has seen in the UFC.”
Page then gave a detailed account of what his grand vision was, revealing that since it didn’t happen at UFC 299, he’ll move on to a different idea next time.
“Initially, it’s Undertaker’s track that comes in and then it starts to drop, the intro into the remix track that my brother-in-law has made, and we start to kind of cook in that area. What happens initially is the lights go dar, everybody is looking at the tunnel, waiting for me to walkout. The spotlight was going to go onto the cage, and I was going to be in the cage!
“So everyone is going to be like, ‘wait, what?’ I’m there in a hood and uniform, I do my sign just as the tune really drops, I do my sign and when it drops, the lights cut again and come back on and I’m in the same position back at the tunnel. So everyone is like, ‘Wait, what?’”
“What it was, my brother was going to be the one in the cage and have the hood on. Anytime I lose weight, me and him look so similar. He’s got hair, but because’s got the hood on, you can’t tell. Stature-wise, he looks exactly like me. At the time, people would have been like, ‘What just happened?!’ They would have been blown away by that and then I would have come with the same energy entrance and walk in. But definitely I think people would have been blown away by that.”
During his time in Bellator, Page became well-known for his flamboyant walkouts, flashy fighting style and entertaining antics, like the time he broke Cyborg Santos’ skull and then threw a PokeBall at him. But unlike Bellator, the UFC has traditionally limited creative freedom from its fighters, and so Page knows he may have to earn a little more trust with regards to some of his big ideas.
“I get it,” Page said. “I’m going to keep trying, I’m going to keep pushing, keep pushing. I’m going to keep coming up with creativity. I just can’t turn that side off of me and I love to entertain. Regardless, I’m going to keep pushing. I’m probably going to annoy a few people but hopefully they understand what I’m trying to do for everybody. ... Undertaker himself Tweeted about it, and that was on half the performance. If he saw [what I wanted] it would have been even bigger.
“There’s so much going on. I don’t over-press. I just try to see what more I can get out of it, and as soon as I understand the tools that are in front of me, I make it work. There’s not need for me to stress about it. It’s just an idea that I had. We couldn’t make it happen this time. I’m going to make another idea happen next time. Hopefully they’re going to slowly see, give this guy a little bit more freedom because he’s on point with this kind of stuff. ... They have to understand and get used to me the same way I have to understand and get used to them.”
The most important person for Page to convince is UFC CEO Dana White. White makes no secret of disliking big displays for walkouts, even commenting unfavorably after UFC 299 on Page and Michel Pereira’s entrances (Pereira danced his way to the cage). But Page believes that he’ll win White over, so long as he wins inside the octagon.
“He seems like he’s against it,” Page said. “This is something I always suspected. Anytime I thought of myself in the UFC I thought, ‘I may piss him off a little bit.’ [Laughs] But I think, at the end of the day, if I do what I do in the cage, on the other side he will allow even for things that annoy him to exist, in my opinion. So I’ve just got to keep making sure I put on good performances. It’s almost like paying the meter. Those KOs and flashy, attractive wins is putting in the meter and hopefully I get some credit on the other side.”
And in a perfect world, some of that credit will come back to Page sooner rather than later, as, given the choice, “MVP” would like to do something special for the much talked about UFC event in The Sphere, UFC 306 which is set for Sep. 14 in Las Vegas.
“I’m really eager to fight in places I haven’t before. Well, one place: Vegas in The Sphere,” Page said. “My creative mind is going crazy. ... I already know, creatively, what I can do. Walkout, this and that, and I guess it would probably be a bit more intimate because that’s part of the package of going into The Sphere and fighting. So my mind is already going about what I can do there.”