One of my favorite wrestlers growing up was a man by the name of Jake "The Snake" Roberts. His gimmick was that he brought a big snake to the ring, and then let it crawl on his felled opponents. Exciting stuff as a 5-year-old. When I was a kid, my heroes were not human; they were symbols of something greater than that. My dad was invincible and knew everything, and the heroic wrestlers were sort of an extension of that. Good guys played by the rules, bad guys cheated. Black and white.
In later years I found out that Jake "The Snake" had had a long history with fighting alcoholism; this was covered in a documentary about wrestling called "Beyond the Mat" that came out in '99. But supposedly "The Snake" had put that all behind him, and seemed to prove this when he showed up for a pop at a WWE RAW episode last year.
Apparently the other day he was making an appearance for one of these small-time indie wrestling federations that run shows in gymnasiums and post fliers around town. And apparently he shows up piss-ass drunk. And proceeds to make an utterly ridiculous fool out of himself by coming out drunk, talking to motorcycles, exposing his genitalia to the crowd, and then when the guy comes out to wrestle him, no-selling (not pretending to get hurt by) the moves the guy does to him. A sad end to the legend of "The Snake."
Of course there's video, and if you're morbidly curious, here it is.
Jake "The Snake" implodes
It's kind of funny, but also sort of sad. The best part is when the fat promoter runs out to try and save the thing, and tries to antagonize Jake into hitting him, but Jake just looks confused.
The Snake
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5 comments:
This did not seem funny to me at all. It was quite horrible to see how low someone can fall.
I think with Wrestling, these stories look so much worse, because in other sports, when your career is over, you are done and any humiliations you suffer are usually outside the area where the person once excelled.
Obviously, athletes will often make a comeback, or come out of retirement, but in wrestling, there is no reason that any sort of average to above average wrestler would not continue to appear at different venues (albeit lesser and lesser ones over time for the majority), so we have to endure that athlete just long their mystique over time.
The fact that with the Snake, you combine this with a legitimate alcohol problem, it really just made me feel sad for him.
There probably isn't a correlation to anything else, is there? There's no legitimate sport where a professional athlete who played in the major leagues would ever go back to the minor leagues. Or is there, and I just don't know about it? Or do they make enough money usually that they wouldn't need to do something like that.
It has happened before, many years ago. In baseball Satchel Paige pitched into his mid 60's, even getting 3 innings on the major league level. In Hockey, Gordy Howe played in 7 different decades. However, the latter was purely a stunt and the former was back when players really didn't make much money. For the most part, players will hang on as long as they can, and the window for a comeback is generally closed after a couple of years.
One thing to also remember is that this is wrestling. The general rule of thumb is that, if it goes on in a ring, it's staged. Ergo, the situation might be a publicity stunt. However, even if it is, that doesn't mean I feel any less sorry for the people involved. If staging a spectacle like that is how you make money, then that's truly sad.
I hope that wasn't stayed because it speaks even less of him that he would so such a thing for money. I agree with you on that completely.
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