Jake Roberts has recalled making the decision to change the finish of one of his WrestleMania matches during the bout.
On the latest edition of the ‘DDP Snake Pit’ podcast, Jake Roberts and Jon Alba discussed the iconic career of The Undertaker.
During the discussion, the two men spoke about Roberts’ match against The Deadman at WrestleMania VIII. Undertaker picked up the win in the match, marking the second victory of The Undertaker’s legendary undefeated streak at WrestleMania.
But interestingly, Jake ‘The Snake’ revealed that the finish of the match was supposed to go down differently, but Roberts called an audible during the bout and changed the ending of the match on the fly:
“It was supposed to have been a Tombstone in the ring. But I thought it fit well, me chasing Paul Bearer, and then Mark getting me right there. And having that done to me on the floor is much more dangerous than having it done in the ring.”
Jake Roberts recalled getting heat for his decision and admitted that he was wrong to change the finish of the match:
“The point is, him doing it to you in the ring, everybody could’ve seen it better, and that’s where I screwed up. It wasn’t something where I didn’t want to do the job … If I didn’t want to do the job, I’d never DDT’d him once.”
The WrestleMania match against The Undertaker ended up being Jake Roberts’ last match in WWE for almost four years and the Hall of Famer touched upon the struggles he was going through at the time:
“Yeah, I was hurting, man. I began having problems at home, which magnified all this. The addiction was starting to rear its head … you’re getting beat up, your body is hurting, you got troubles at home … how much rest am I getting? Not much at all … It was probably the worst time in my life. The hardest time of my life.”
H/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.