Jake Roberts' Insecurities Prevented Him From Watching His Matches Back, Explains Deliberate Style

Jake "The Snake" Roberts put together a hall-of-fame career based on a methodical, conniving heel persona. But, as he explained in an interview with The Ringer, he was too self-critical to watch his performances back when he was an active wrestler.

"I never watched television when I was wrestling," he said. "Because of my upbringing, and what I went through, I never thought I was good enough. I was very insecure, very insecure."

Those insecurities also helped turn Roberts into a perfectionist, he said. That made him very "deliberate" in crafting his on-screen persona, carefully considering everything from the way he walked, to the way he talked, even to the way he looked at his opponents.

"I put a lot of time and a lot of thought into what I do out there, man," Roberts said. "A lot of it comes naturally. But the things that come natural to me are because I've learned through my life what works and what doesn't. How to go about achieving what I want to achieve in the ring."

He suggested that he does watch his old stuff now, and is sometimes surprised to hear that the commentators of the time held him in "high regard."

Roberts is the subject of the latest episode of the A&E "Biography: WWE Legends" documentary series, which recently debuted its third season with a feature on the NWO. Meanwhile, he made his return to AEW programming alongside Lance Archer on the February 24 episode of AEW "Rampage."