Jake Roberts Recalls Intentionally Injuring An Opponent

During a recent episode of DDP Snake Pit, Jake 'The Snake' Roberts and Diamond Dallas Page looked back on some highlights of their careers. For Roberts, someone who battled addiction and other vices throughout his time in the ring, the stories sometimes have dark themes to them.

On this episode, Jake recalled when an opponent during a match frustrated him so greatly that he took business into his own hands and intentionally injured the guy.

"I had an incident where a guy was giving me a clothesline every night and it was freaking ripping my head off, and I was recovering from having neck surgery. And in wrestling, you can make it look like you tore the guy's head off or you can tear the guy's head off. And of course, making it look like it is much better because then the guy can sell it properly. When you tear somebody's head off, there's no selling it, man. You get what you got.

"And I went to the guy and called him out, you know, 'hey dude, you're killing me. What the hell?' And he looked at me and said, 'well maybe it's time you get out of the ring'. So the next time we wrestled, he clotheslined me and I did a little maneuver and snapped his bicep in half with intent. And when he went down, he was grabbing his arm, the bicep rolled up on his shoulder, it looked pretty awesome.

"And he's screaming to ring the bell and I jumped on top of him and grabbed bicep and just started squeezing, and I was pissed. And I told him maybe it was time for him to get out of the d-mn ring. Not proud of it. I do need to apologize to him, face him, I'm not gonna call his name out. We all know him. But he did what he did, and I did what I did, and he had six months off."

In hindsight, Jake 'The Snake' Roberts admits that he should have been a man and warned him that if he continued working stiff, Jake would retaliate.

"A real man would've said, 'if you do that again, I'm gonna do this to you'. I didn't do that. So, I felt bad about it because as a wrestler, each time you get into that ring, it's a life or death situation and you trust your opponent with your life. So I took advantage of that and I feel, I've always felt bad about that. I do need to apologize to the guy about it. I'm kind of scared to because he'll probably kick my a–, and I can't take that anymore."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit DDP Snake Pit with an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.