You might not believe this but Jake “The Snake” Roberts didn’t really like snakes at all. In fact he even admitted that he was afraid of them in one interview. But the added zeroes on his paycheck made him forget that fear really quickly as he went on to become known as the guy that carried around the sack with the big snake in it. Wrestling fans that can remember Jake’s matches from back in the day should be able to recall what happened whenever Jake wrestled and won his match. The python would be let out of the bag and draped over his seemingly helpless opponent, an offering for the snake or a chance to humiliate the defeated wrestler as the snake slowly slithered over their body.
I used to think that other gimmicks like stuffing a dollar bill in a person’s mouth or cutting their hair in the middle of the ring was bad, but putting a live snake on someone seems almost traumatizing. It would be especially troublesome if a person was to have a severe fear of snakes and knew that they’d still have to take such a thing lying down, literally. To realize that Jake didn’t even like them however is something that a lot of fans might not have realized until now.
That wasn’t all though. The fact was that Jake had to carry the snake with him wherever he went. He had to feed it, he had to care for it, and he had to lug it around along with the rest of his stuff. Just think about that for a second. A wrestler is on the road for a long period of time throughout the year. They have to have enough clothing to last them for a while, they have to carry their gear, and in the case of Jake Roberts, he had to lug around a 100-pound python. He regretted not picking a cobra to work with despite the fact that the snake is inherently more dangerous. Even taking out its venom glands, which might have been frowned upon by animal rights activists, wouldn’t have made much difference since it’s still an imposing and very ill-tempered snake.
The best part though was that the cobra would have only weighed 15 pounds instead of another 100. Just think about that, Jake had to carry that snake with him from his hotel to the locker room, then from the locker room all the way to the ring, and then from the ring all the way back to the locker room and so on. That’s a lot to carry on a regular basis.
It definitely didn’t do much for his disposition since Jake was a very dark person for a good part of his time in the WWE. He’d had a rough life and didn’t talk much about it, but he would certainly act as intimidating as he could. A lot of the negative attitude that his character brought to the ring was in fact quite real since he had a heavy load of anger and shame that he’d brought over from his personal life. While it didn’t necessarily mix with business it definitely made him a much more effective bad guy.
The snake was just a way to up his dangerous look.
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