Everybody needs to feel needed, says Jake The Snake.
Jake Roberts is often considered to be one of the great minds of professional wrestling and was considered to be a pioneer of the art form of the promo and the importance of verbalizing the issue at hand inside the wrestling ring.
Now, Jake has a new podcast with Diamond Dallas Page and in their inaugural podcast, the pair break down their friendship including how they first became close when Jake was in WCW for a brief stint in 1992.
Jake was able to pass along knowledge to both Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nash while riding along with them to different shows. Jake says he's still able to do the same thing with the talents of today in All Elite Wrestling and for him, that is great because it makes him feel needed.
"I'm in AEW now, these young kids down there, I love them to death, even though it is Cirque du Soleil in a ring. It's different but even though it is still the same. You know, the things that I can teach you you can use still use today. When [DDP & Kevin] Nash, you know, would let me ride with them, it made me feel really good and made me feel needed. Don't we all wanna feel needed, man?"
Jake would say that his biggest gripe with stars of today is that they kill their own credibility by not delivering everything that they do flawlessly because they're too busy trying to be experimental because they are such great athletes.
Jake would use the comparison of a man cheating on his wife and then she never believed him again.
“Well, you never destroy your own credibility, right? Because once you destroy your credibility, that fan writes you off. they put a big X on your name, 'phony, push him aside.' How do you do that? Well, you don't go in the ring and do 80 things that you can't do perfectly. That's what I told him. I said, ‘Don't do any different things. Do five different things that you do absolutely perfect that people cannot see through no matter how hard they try. Because then they believe in you. If they believe in you, they don't mind spending their money on you. They don't mind coming to see you. Because they know that Diamond Dallas Page is gonna kick somebody's butt and guys will go out there and they'll do 99 things perfectly. But that 100th thing stinks.
“I kind of compare it to, like, the guy that had been married for 20 years. Okay and Jake comes down and Jake takes him out like getting drunk and he winds up sleeping with a [little person]. Yeah, he goes home and he feels so bad because he's never cheated on his wife. He loves her and loves her to death, man. He feels so bad that there is only one thing to do. I got to get it right. I got to tell her. So he goes to her and he says, ‘Baby. You know how much I love, you know? Well, honey. Last night that damn Jake got me drunk and I slept with a [little person] well, I'll never do that again.’ Do you think she believes him? No, he destroyed his own credibility. She doesn't even believe he's never cheated before. She doesn't believe anything that he says now because he destroyed his own credibility. Why in the hell would you want to do that?”
He continued, “That's my biggest bitch today with the guys out in the ring is, they're such phenomenal athletes. I mean, they're 100 times more the athletes now than I ever was or ever thought about being actually. They are incredible. But they do things that aren't quite right and it just kills them or they get busted up or crippled. So my story is less is more.”
Jake hasn't been featured in a major storyline on television alongside Lance Archer for quite some time. Most recently, he publicly stated that he tested positive for COVID-19. Learn more here.
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