10 Wrestlers That Totally Broke The Mould

5. Jake €˜The Snake€™ Roberts

Jake The Snake is like the villain in a Sunday afternoon Western, only far more believable. As a wrestler, his appeal is odd. He isn€™t flashy looking, doesn€™t come across as especially charismatic and, in his prime, was neither a muscular slab of beef, nor an especially imposing figure. In fact, with his chicken legs, slight pot belly and thin, almost reedy arms, he never looked much like a pro wrestler at all. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he€™d look straight at the camera with those callous, bullet-point eyes and just for a second, it was as if he was looking right at you, passing judgement on you through your television set. Then he€™d laugh that chilling, desert-at-midnight laugh and you€™d shiver in your seat. Few promos can freeze your blood and captivate your attention like an old school Jake Roberts promo. When that guy talked, you listened and the more you listened, the more afraid you ultimately became. In the ring, Jake€™s every move had logic and a dark purpose to it. Like the legendary samurai master Miyamoto Musashi, Jake €˜did not do anything useless€™. He stalked his opponents, large and small, with cat-like stealth and omnipresent, reptilian cruelty. His finisher, the DDT, was sold to audiences as the most dangerous move in wrestling €“ and on-screen WWF officials regularly discussed banning it. The DDT was probably the most legit and feared finisher in wrestling at that time. In short, Jake was a great worker and it was nothing short of an absolute joy to watch him ply his trade with such savagery and relish. With a windswept tangle of dark hair behind him and a hooked moustache under his lip, Jake was part wrestler, part outlaw. He looked the part and he lived the life. Sadly, that is where it all unravelled for a man who may well be the most compelling character in the history of the wrestling business.

A blurred tangle of sleazy sex, prodigious drug intake and an array of personal tragedies all took their toll on Roberts, both publicly and privately. Even his real-life conversion to Christianity quickly became tainted and made his on-screen persona come off as a travelling preacher who€™s faith had lapsed just enough that he slept with one eye open and a six-shooter tucked under his pillow. Go back and watch him in Barry Blaustein€™s excellent wrestling movie Beyond The Mat €“ his interview segments, even when he is high on a potentially lethal concoction of whisky, cocaine and abject self pity, are utterly fascinating and more than a little bit scary. Jake is the intersection, he inhabits that knife-edge, vanishing point on the wrestling horizon where the work ends and the shoot begins. He was always so compelling to watch. In the end, it was his gift as well as his curse... Thankfully, Jake€™s hard partying lifestyle is now firmly behind him. A combination of embracing Diamond Dallas Page€™s DDP Yoga initiative, as well as being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and successfully undergoing lifesaving surgery have fashioned Jake €˜The Snake€™ into a new man. His miraculous recovery has turned him from a cautionary fable into a true wrestling success story and, along the way, has inspired a lot of other people to turn their own lives around. As Jake€™s story proves, it is never too late for anyone to make a positive change...