Peter Polaco hasn’t watched the video. Doing so isn’t something he believes will help his ongoing battle for sobriety.
Polaco, the former ECW and WWE wrestler Justin Credible, wants to move past the viral video of him attempting an in-ring promo drunk at a Connecticut independent wrestling show on Dec. 15.
“I won’t see it,” Polaco told The Post in a phone interview. “It’s not something that is going to uplift me. I try not to do negative things. I probably can imagine what I look like.”
His focus instead is on changing his image and regaining control of his life.
The 44-year-old Polaco, who says he has been sober since the incident, has dealt with addiction in different forms for the past 15 years. The next step in that process is going to Atlanta in the coming weeks to stay and train with WWE Hall of Famer Diamond Dallas Page, who he has known for 20 years.
It will be a more intense go around with Page’s DDP Yoga program after using it three years ago from his own home to aid in overcoming drug addiction, including pain killers and heroin.
Polaco said he knows he can’t afford another relapse.
“This time it’s a no brainer and it’s a no choice because I can’t drink,” Polaco said. “I need to be sober or else I will die. It’s one of those situations.”
Polaco, a former ECW champion who has wrestled the likes of Kurt Angle, CM Punk, Sabu and Tommy Dreamer, said his addiction issues stem from his unhappiness with who he was inside and outside of wrestling.
He started wrestling when he was 18 and cited the mental drain of the business, the relentless travel and the wear and tear on his body that led to his addiction to pain medication. He recalls choosing not to bring them on a vacation, only to become violently ill for days.
“When I got home and I finally took some pain medicine, I was like ‘Wow’ I felt better and felt normal. That’s what addiction is,” Polaco said.
He turned to Page’s program for help — and in the process lost 35 pounds. It focuses on exercises that are low impact on your joints, proper eating and teaching people how to maintain a positive mindset.
After getting clean, Polaco replaced drugs with alcohol. People in his family drank, it was socially acceptable and his issues were with pain meds. Or so he thought.
“Little do I know when you are in recovery you can’t do any mood or mind altering substances because it’s more of an internal thing,” he said. “So, I just started casually drinking over the period of a couple of years, and it just started to snowball.”
It ultimately led to that public relapse at a Blitzkrieg! Pro wrestling show. He rolled into the ring with a kendo stick demanding a microphone while slurring his words in the process. Polaco is loudly asked to leave by the promoter, who called him his hero growing up before saying “you reek like booze.”
Polaco has publicly apologized to the promotion for his actions and said his intention was to work an angle with legend Terry Funk.
“Being buzzed, drunk, whatever, you don’t make the right calls. … It was my intention to work something cool off it,” Polaco said. “But especially with the young kids who aren’t experienced, they didn’t know how to react and these promoters are not experienced, so they didn’t know how to react.
“It just ended up turning into something more than it really was. Not to demean it or downplay it. I definitely did what I did. … It’s a big deal for me because I drank.”
He didn’t have to look far for help. Polaco, born in Waterbury, Conn, said he was bombarded with messages from friends such as Scott Hall and Sean “X-Pac” Waltman. Page also messaged him to check in.
“I just reached out and said, ‘Dude how you doing?’ ” Page said in a phone interview. “He goes, ‘You’ve seen the shit.’ And I’m like ‘Yeah, I’ve seen it.’ And we just started taking.”
Polaco, who has been married 22 years and has three kids, continues to get help through the WWE’s Talent Wellness Program and daily support from long-time friend and director Eric Nyenhuis and Doug Cartelli, a Connecticut businessman and MMA/boxing promoter. Nyenhuis reached out to Cartelli, who he says has a strong history of helping athletes with drug addictions. Polaco is also going to regular meetings and sessions with a psychiatrist.
“Everybody goes down,” Page said. “The key is not staying there and teaching yourself how to get out of it.”
His support group wants Polaco’s story to have a happy ending. Too many wrestlers have died young such as Balls Mahoney, Curt Hennig, Bam Bam Bigelow and Andrew “Test” Martin, among others.
“I’ve seen all these guys self-destruct man,” Nyenhuis said in regards to some of this friends in the wrestling business. “It’s not f—king cool anymore, and the only person I see helping [wrestlers] is DDP.”
Page said he believes the viral video might have been the best thing to happen to Polaco, saying the person who shot it did him “a favor” by making his problem public. The incident became motivation for Polaco to earn the opportunity to train with Page in Atlanta with an extended period of sobriety and daily check-ins on his diet and exercise.
“The really cool thing about [Polaco] is he wants to get clean,” Page said. “He knows he can’t drink.”
Page has helped the likes of Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Hall battle addiction, while others such as Chris Jericho have used the program to stay in shape late in their careers. Roberts’ journey was detailed in the documentary “The Resurrection of Jake the Snake.” Polaco has a similar plan for his time with Page.
Cartelli also is helping Polaco financially as he tries to rebuild his life and is funding the filming of a documentary that will be shot during his time with Page, according to Nyenhuis. It will be titled “Credible”.
Nyenhuis said they don’t have a distributor for the film yet, but the movie is about more than that for him.
“If nobody ever buys it or watches it, I want Pete to have it because it’s Pete’s story,” he said. “He doubts himself every second of the day and uses drugs and alcohol to suppress it. … We get this whole thing shot and nobody watches it that’s fine. Pete can watch it and say people do care about me.”
It is one of the opportunities Polaco will get to pay his second chance forward. Page also wants to train him to teach his program to others.
Polaco said he is grateful for the opportunities ahead of him, but understands it is up to him not to waste them. Accountability to his family — who he said knows when he’s had a drink— Page, Cartelli and others mean everything right now to Polaco. One drink, another bad episode and it all could be gone. His life and his well being are at stake.
“All I’ve got to do is the work,” Polaco said. “They are providing me with the platform to do all this stuff and it’s about getting well and it’s about hopefully this will be a good story, not another bad thing. Hopefully this incident that happened will be the beginning of something good.”