10 Wrestlers Who Had No Business Being In The Ring
2. Jake Roberts
It should be impossible to watch wrestling for long enough and not have a love/hate relationship with it.
While it's an exponentially better industry than it was, on the fringe it remains a vile, exploitative carny racket to which some of the very worst people are drawn. Even now, in an era in which the mainstream outfits - while being far from perfect - operate far more conscientiously than the bleak standard of the 20th century, unscrupulous under-the-radar promoters think nothing of booking names implicated in the #SpeakingOut movement if they'll sell a few extra tickets. Frighteningly, since 2020, on certain occasions, there's actually little to distinguish the mainstream to the under-the-radar.
Even by the standards of the rotten 20th century, the grotesque consequences of which were really felt in the early 21st, Heroes of Wrestling was an atrocity. In a grim bid to capitalise on the Monday Night Wars boom, Fosstone Productions gathered the unemployable, forgotten and damned to earn some coin. The action was unilaterally horrendous, and it was far from the worst aspect of the show. Jake Roberts, to use an old industry euphemism, was "in no condition to perform".
So addled that he had no idea where he was, his infamous pre-match promo was memed when it really shouldn't have been, and when he eventually made it to the ring, he performed salacious acts with his snake, which, with actual children looking on, he insinuated was his penis, which he stroked suggestively.
He shouldn't have been allowed out there, but yes sir they promised you a main event.