Jimmy Jacobs On If Vince McMahon Liked His Writing, Drug Addiction While With WWE, WWE Departure
Jimmy Jacobs recently joined the Talk Is Jericho podcast and spoke about his time with the WWE. Jacobs got his start as a writer with the company in April 2015, but he also had a short-lived stint as an in-ring performer in the early 2000's when he jobbed for Eddie Guerrero.
"My first time wrestling in a WWE ring was in 2005 when I wrestled Eddie Guerrero on SmackDown. They were doing a program with him and Rey Mysterio, and I was just at the show hanging out with my buddy Paul London in Pennsylvania, and they needed someone to work with Eddie," Jacobs explained. "Couple of guys had seen me before; they looked me up and down and told me that I was working with Eddie Guerrero tonight and it was an awesome experience. I was 21 years old. I had attended the show not expecting to work and then all of a sudden I was in a match with one of the best performers ever."
Jacobs said Guerrero was incredibly gracious to him for stepping up to face him. As one of the top superstars on the roster at the time, he didn't have to be courteous to Jacobs, but that was his nature and Jacobs admired him for it, even though he later had to suffer a beatdown at the hands of Guerrero.
"I went up to Eddie Guerrero and introduced myself and told him that I think we are going to be working together tonight, and he thanked me for wanting to be in the match with him. He said that he wanted to apologize because the match needed to be all about him, but wanted to thank me anyway for doing it, like I was doing him a favor or something," Jacobs said. "He said to me that God-willing we will work together again in the future under better circumstances. He had given Rey the brainbuster on the steps the week before, he had taken Rey's mask. This week he comes to the ring with Rey's mask, and he wrestles this kid while putting on Rey's mask on me and beat the s**t out of me while I had Rey's mask on."
Jacobs was fired from WWE in October after posting an Instagram photo with The Bullet Club during their "invasion" of Monday Night RAW in September. He had worked as a writer for the WWE for two-and-a-half years and wrote many high-profile storylines. Jacobs said he would sometimes perform the promos he wrote for Vince McMahon himself just so he can properly gauge how the Chairman would respond to them.
"I always tried to deliver it to him, but a lot of times he would just ask for the paper. Vince [McMahon] had a critical eye when it came to promos and he was big on words, and rightfully so," Jacobs said. "In Vince's mind, sometimes I think the promos get flack from fans. In Vince's mind, if you just left it for the performer to say what he wants to say, everybody is just going to say that I am going to kick your a**. Vince is very big on having creativity in there. I always felt that he had a very sharp eye and so sometimes I felt that my words, just by themselves wouldn't hold up, so I always liked to perform them to Vince, and sometimes he liked them, sometimes he didn't."
Jacobs also discussed his departure from the WWE and revealed he suffered from a severe drug addiction to opium. He said he eventually grew tired of the buttoned-up atmosphere of the WWE and it started to consume his life, leading to him feeling depressed. He has no regrets over how he left the company.
"With WWE being the mecca of life, suddenly I didn't seem to exist, and finding yourself, and being clean for the first time in a long time, which I am still, seven months ago. You find different parts of yourself. I found that I missed performing, and found that I wasn't okay with being in a suit and tie, and having my hair slicked back, and not having jewlery in, and not having makeup on," he said. "That is part of who I am, since I was a kid trying on my grandma's earrings. This is part of me; I struggled with drug addiction and depression for so long. It's really weird because you don't hear this often, but when you are in that state, you can't trust that voice in your head. When you are depressed you just want to throw everything away. When you are on drugs you want to make this crazy leap, and then you think about you being high and saying that it's a choice because of it. You spend a lot of time just with your head down and move forward and you can't really make decisions, and then suddenly here I am finding things out about myself and making decisions so, look, am I a mastermind where i created the hottest angle outside of WWE to get myself fired from WWE? No, I wasn't trying to get fired, but I wasn't trying to not get fired.
"There is zero bitter feelings," he continued. "I had a fun two and a half years there. I have zero bitterness of why they fired me. This past six weeks has been the time of my life. If Vince wanted to keep me around he would have kept me around. I don't even know how that got in front of him, but he had made the decision that I needed to go. I was cool with that because I felt that I needed to go."
Since leaving the WWE, Jacobs had made appearances for multiple companies. He said he doesn't plan on signing exclusively with one promotion any time soon because he finds it more enjoyable to choose who he works for, but he mentioned that he will be working more extensively with Impact Wrestling.
"Right now, I'm not looking to be exclusive with anybody, which is what I am enjoying about all this. For two and a half years, I felt trapped in a lot of ways; I'm not saying that to disparage anything from WWE, it was just that in my role I felt restricted, but right now my freedom is so nice and good," he said. "I am going where I want and whoever I want to work with. My first appearance was for Ring of Honor where I took that Selfie again with Bullet Club. I showed up with Impact Wrestling, for TNA when they were in Ottawa a few weeks ago. That is certainly a project I plan on working with in different capacities. The TNA brand definitely has suffered a lot of damage, which certainly isn't what it once was, but they still have a lot of talent, and I think I can offer something to them that they need so I am looking forward to having a future. They're definitely not done. They are in the rebuilding phase at the moment."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Talk Is Jericho with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: Talk Is Jericho
Peter Bahi contributed to this article.