Flashback Audio: Jake Roberts Talks First Meeting With Vince McMahon, Hating Snake Gimmick & Attire

Above is audio from an interview WrestlingINC.com conducted with Jake "The Snake" Roberts regarding a variety of topics, including his early work with WWF. We are posting interesting clips and stories from our interviews to our YouTube channel, so please take a moment to subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/WrestlingINC1.

Roberts abruptly quit working in the Mid-South territory over his feelings that he wasn't being booked or pushed properly as a top babyface. His first move after quitting was to call Vince McMahon about working in WWF.

"The next morning, I called Vince [McMahon] and I was told that he was going to be out of town for two weeks and that he would get back with me then. I thought, 'Oh, my god. Now I've really screwed up.' About 30 minutes later, the phone rang and it was Vince. He wanted me to fly up and meet with him, so I flew up and met with him. Basically, we sat down and he said, 'We have an idea of you wearing lime green pants or purple pants?tights?and having knee high lace up boots and carrying a snake.' I said, 'Dude, that's just not me. I wear karate pants and I wear slip on boots. Because the last thing I want to do when I do is know that I wasted 5 years of my life lacing up boots."

Roberts said he had done some rough math and determined that over the course of 15 to 20 years working in the business, he'd spend a total of four months lacing up boots and that didn't seem like a good use of his time. Vince replied by telling Jake how much money that he was prepared to pay to whoever took the proposed gimmick.

"?(H)e just kind of looked at me and said, 'Well, that's a shame because there's somebody who's going to be wearing purple and lime green with knee high snake skin boots and they're going to make about a million a year.' So, I looked at him and I said, 'You know what? I would look very good in spandex. With purple and green and knee high boots. I think I'd look just wonderful.' And that was how I went to work."

You can read much more from the original interview here.
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