Exclusive Details On The New Jake "The Snake" Roberts Documentary, First Teaser Revealed
As noted earlier, Jake "The Snake" Roberts recently moved in with Diamond Dallas Page to train for a documentary entitled, The Resurrection of Jake 'The Snake' Roberts. Page spoke with me about the motivation behind helping Roberts, who Page credits for helping him transition from being a manager to a wrestler in the early 1990's.
"[The project] started with me just wanting to help my buddy, who was beaten the f–k up, not just mentally but physically," Page revealed. "Jake couldn't go from standing to the ground and back up again like regular people, his body's so f–ked. He's actually doing that now, but it took awhile to turn all those muscles on, start doing the workout and eating correctly."
Filmmaker Steve Yu, who had worked with Page in the past, inspired the project. He admitted that Page was apprehensive in the beginning about doing the documentary.
"Dallas and I talked about it, this would be a really amazing story if we could help Jake get back to his feet, not only physically, but also mentally and financially," said Yu. "Dallas was kind of nervous about the whole situation. When we approached Jake, it kind of sparked some excitement with him."
As part of the project, the 57 year old Roberts began using Page's DDPYOGA program in August before even moving into the house. Yu noted that Roberts would tire quickly during the early workouts, but kept wanting to move forward. Roberts' motivation convinced Page to move forward with the project.
Page and Yu left Roberts for a few weeks to see how he would do, during which time Roberts lost 20 pounds. Roberts has gone on to lose about 35 lbs. so far after initially weighing 305 lbs.
"We were pretty shocked that he lost the weight so quickly doing the workout and eating the way Dallas suggested," Yu admitted. "We were impressed with his physical progress. He had been doing the workout almost everyday — not that much of it, maybe 30 minutes of it — but we could already see that he could get up out his chair without holding onto anything."
As part of the program, Roberts will be submitted to random drug tests. If Roberts were to fail any of them, he will be forced to enter the WWE rehab program or leave the house.
"[Before we started] Dallas asked Jake, 'when was the last time that you used any serious drugs'," Yu recalled. "Dallas had thought that Jake was fairly clean, but Jake's response was, 'about a month ago.' Dallas was really shocked by that, but respected his honesty. He was almost ready to back out, but he believes that Jake can do it."
Roberts hopes that the progress he makes from this project will get his life in order, and may allow him to have one final run in the squared circle.
"This is not to go back to WWE or TNA or anything like that, his body wouldn't be able to do that," Page admitted. "I'm pretty sure he has one match left in him, and if he keeps going the way he has been, maybe he'll be able to do a 12-city tour and we'll film all of it. But we don't know exactly where we'll be.
"One day he said to me over breakfast, 'I feel so good man, it's blowing my mind, I'd love to have one more run to leave on my terms.' Jake's new line is, 'my history is not my destiny.'"
Check out the exclusive teaser trailer for the documentary below: