With his brand new Dirty Details Tour up and running and the Snake Pit open for business, WWE Hall of Famer and timeless wrestling legend Jake "The Snake" Roberts stops by The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling to discuss his new road show and some of the classic moments from his illustrious and infamous career. In the following excerpt from the 45-minute interview, Jake reveals the details behind his cancelled program with Hulk Hogan and what was the worst match of his career. The full episode can be downloaded at this link.
Match with Randy Savage years prior to the snake-biting incident:
"It was unexpected for a lot of people to see that happening and I remember that night really well. Hogan was off doing a movie and Vince and the gentleman from NBC (Dick) Ebersol pulled us in a room and said that we are going to be on longer than anybody has ever been on a Saturday Night Main Event and this is the first time that we've ever done it without Hogan and we want you to know that if the numbers drop when down when we go to commercial break the chances are you will be back in Poughkeepsie working for some minor league promotion. I laughed but Savage went freaking nuts. He said that we'd have to do something spectacular or something they'd never expect and I said just lighten up man. I said Randy; lets just use what got us here. Don't change and go off the wall with some fly by night seed of your pants thing that may not work, lets just go with what got us to the dance. He argued that point but I remember that match really well because for the first five to seven minutes I basically just had to block and block everything that he was throwing because he was throwing some taters. Rights and lefts and just zinging them in because he was pumped up and going for it all at once right there in the beginning and just going with everything and I was like we've got to make them wait. I finally blew him and he settled down once he blew up and than he was fine and we got back to working the match and everything was great. I remember one of the greatest compliments that I've ever got in this business was his father (Angelo Poffo) approached me in Tampa one night and told me that was the best match of Randy's career by far and thanked me for putting it out there. That was a hell of a compliment because I myself never graded my stuff and I just wanted to have the best match that I could all the time. That doesn't mean going out there and doing all this crazy stuff, it just means going out there and putting together a great match and to have an old timer like that come up and tell me that made my day, my year, my career actually."
Spin The Wheel Make The Deal match in WCW:
"Great thing the commercials were good because that was it. The match stunk and so did the idea. That was such a horrible thing to choose. What in the hell man. I'm not climbing no pole, are you serious Bill (Watts)? That is the best thing that you could come up with? I thought it was ridiculous and the match was one of my worst matches. Sting wasn't very excited to wrestle back then and he had gotten tired of being the guy that everybody depended on to bring in the big house and he was getting lazy because he had that contract and that is the bad thing about contracts is that guys get lazy and are like well, I'll get all my money anyway. That is the wrong way to look at it brother, those are the guys that hurt wrestling. Those contracts and they didn't go out there and put out and they didn't push it and he went out there and did just enough to get by. Well, that is just not how you do it, that is not how you wrestle and never will and same goes for these shows that I'm doing now. I go out there and I gut it and it is kind of crazy but after an hour or an hour and twenty minuets out there on stage I feel like I worked a damn match and I am using that energy and I pour it out. I empty the damn bucket and by the end of the night I have to get out of there because I am exhausted and ready to collapse because I put everything I can into it and that is how much I believe in it."
For this and every other episode of The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling and The Triple Threat Podcast featuring "The Franchise" Shane Douglas please subscribe to them on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Podomatic, and Player FM. Also follow them on Twitter @TwoManPowerTrip & @rasslinpal. Thanks to them for the transcript.