10 Ups & 7 Downs For AEW In 2020 (So Far)
5. Jake The Pest
Jake 'The Snake' Roberts has been a net positive to Lance Archer. 'The Murderhawk Monster' is a functional talker himself, though Jake, craggy voice and all, is one of the greatest of all time and gives his charge's act an injection of genuine evil to compliment his brutishness.
Unfortunately, that evil manifested in the most tasteless way prior to Double Or Nothing. Roberts became a full-on botherer. Resorting to cheap misogyny and simulated sexual harassment, he symbolically dropped a snake on Brandi Rhodes, slithering all over Cody's wife himself, before cutting a copy, outdated "women belong in the kitchen" promo the next week, drawing more eye-rolls than heat.
This stuff absolute sucks. It doesn't garner pro-wrestling animosity in 2020, only genuine animosity, and the distastefulness is more likely to make viewers tune out than tune back in to see the babyface's retribution. It undermined the Archer vs. Cody storyline too, transforming it from one of the best-built matches in wrestling to marred midcard attraction.