Jake Roberts On His WWE Tenure: “I Didn’t Play The Office Game Very Well”
Recently on the DDP Snake Pit podcast, AEW talent Jake Roberts talked a bit about his career in WWE and how he felt one of his downfalls was being unable to play "office games" well.
By that, Jake Roberts meant he was an old-school talent, and thus wasn't able to adapt well at first to things like the introduction of emails.
"I didn't play the office game very well," Roberts said. "I'm old school. I use about three things on this phone. That's it. I'm not a tech guy and the reason being is I have an addictive personality. If I was to get into that, I would do nothing but look at that all day long. They would find me in a room shriveled up and dead because I get hooked on something and I don't give it up.
"So I just never did that and the business has changed and I didn't. I remember Vince saying you need to check your emails. I'm like 'yeah, sure.' And then a few weeks later they brought to my attention that I had over 900 emails. They had a guy come and he was going to teach me. I ran him off in about 20 minutes. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I couldn't get any of it. I couldn't grasp it."
That wasn't Jake Roberts' only problem, however. He revealed that jealousy was something that affected him, which he described as part of the office games that were played in WWE.
"The other problem was jealousy," Roberts admitted. "I didn't know that you had play these games with the other people that are in there. Holy crap. I thought once you were in the office you were okay. I found out if you took wrong seat in the limo, you're going to piss somebody off. I hated it. I hated it. Such a waste of energy.
"Vince used to ask me to come to the office to help him and I said 'Vince, if you want something from me, call me. Tell me about it, and I'll give it to you. But I'm not gonna spend my only three days off in these two months in Connecticut. I've got a wife I'd like to see and actually wants to see me.' This was early, later on it was a little bit different because I heard that. I just, I couldn't handle the games in the office, man. I don't play well with others."
After that WWE run ended, Jake Roberts went onto the independents, an experience he described as okay until he started wrestling people that had both limited experience and paid to wrestle him. At that point, Roberts admitted wrestling wasn't as fun as it used to be.
"After that time, man, I just pretty much dropped out," he said. "Because when I went on the independents for a while it was okay. But man, let me tell you how bad it got. I started realizing the people I'm wrestling, I've never heard of. 'Wow, am I that old?' And then I ask a guy one time, I said, 'how many matches have you had?' 'Three.' 'Three and you're in the main event? Are you kidding me?' 'Well I paid for it.' 'You paid for it? What do you mean?' 'I gave the promoter $1,500 to wrestle you.' 'Wait a minute. I'm making a grand, so the promoter is making cash off me by me going out there and endangering my health with this young kid?'
"That happened several times and I'm finally like 'I can't do this. This is crazy.' And the fact that these guys were screwing me over like that just really hurt. It wasn't fun anymore and it wasn't fun because the guys I was in the ring with didn't know anything. Didn't know anything, you know? Christ. I loved wrestling and I always have and I always will because I like getting connected here. Not in the ears, not in the eyes, but here. When you start caring about the opponent or your star or whoever you picked or watching somebody come up the ranks, or watching a Cincinnati go after an LA if you will. You know, that's the good parts. But the bad parts, man, sometimes can outweigh them."
To quote this article, please credit DDP Snake Pit and provide an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription