10 Most Inspirational Wrestling Stars Of All Time
4. Jake 'The Snake' Roberts
It’s not exactly accurate to say that Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts has been battling his demons for decades. For a long, long time, that battle was over: all the snakes were in his head, and drug and alcohol addiction had him beaten into the ground.
Roberts was almost a massive star in the late eighties and early nineties. A programme with Hulk Hogan was nixed in 1986 when the Hulkster feared that the charismatic heel Roberts, whose DDT finishing move was incredibly over with fans, would be cheered over him. It was ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, a decade before Austin himself defeated Roberts to win the King Of The Ring tournament and cut that legendary 3:16 promo.
But his issues consistently got in the way of capitalising on his talent. He’d kick and relapse, kick and relapse, time and again - at one point, like many others, he nearly had it licked through old school religion, but that didn’t take either.
In 1999, the documentary Beyond The Mat showed Roberts at his lowest ebb: a crack addict, ruining every relationship around him. He was screwing up in the ring and out, exposing himself to fans, having drunken breakdowns. By summer 2012, he was considering suicide… and that’s the rock bottom moment where he reached out to his old buddy and protégé Diamond Dallas Page.
Page made it his business to help bring his old friend back to life again. He instilled in him the precepts of his DDP Yoga system to lose weight and regain fitness, health and vitality. With Page’s help, Roberts began to care about himself again, care about his past and his present to realise that, in his late fifties, he still had a future.
When Diamond Dallas Page inducted Jake The Snake Roberts into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2014, standing ramrod straight, clear-eyed, healthy and hale at the age of fifty-eight, there was barely a dry eye in the house. His speech, brutally honest and utterly heartfelt, brought the house to its knees. One of the greatest masters of psychology in professional wrestling still had what it took to make a crowd feel just what he was feeling.
In 2015, the documentary The Resurrection Of Jake The Snake showed Roberts yanking himself back from the edge, concrete evidence to anyone watching that it’s never too late to turn things around. That’s a testimony plenty of people need to hear.