WWE Hall of Famer Jake Roberts has recalled The Undertaker giving the rest of the WWE locker room a dressing down for their treatment of him.
The addiction issues suffered by Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts are well known to wrestling fans. In 1996 Roberts returned to WWE where his issues were part of his character as he became a Bible-spouting preacher – something that eventually led to the Austin 3:16 catchphrase being born.
In August of 1996, Jake Roberts found himself embroiled in a feud with Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler with The King using Roberts’ issues against him in various distasteful ways. On one occasion, Lawler poured a bottle of whiskey over Roberts in a moment that surely wouldn’t make air today.
Speaking on his DDP Snake Pit podcast, Jake Roberts reflected on the angle with DDP and his wider treatment by the WWE locker room at the time:
“Absolutely it was in horrible taste. They are making fun of me being an alcoholic. He [Lawler] wound up pouring a bottle of whiskey down in my face and burnt the sh*t out of my eyes. [DDP asks if it was real whiskey, Jake confirms it was] Oh no, it was, ask Jerry he’ll tell you the same damn thing because whenever it comes to him for me to pour it on him he said you can’t pour that on me.”
“I said ‘what do you mean? You poured it on me?’ He said well, well Vince wanted it poured on you, you know. That mother… because at the time, I was really struggling with my sobriety. And I can’t say boys will be boys because boys can be a**holes.”
“They were constantly putting things in my bag that shouldn’t have been there. Taking chances with my damn well-being because they were putting drugs in my damn suitcase I didn’t know were there. And I would find sh*t in there. You know, paraphernalia and stuff. It was just horrible, man.”
Jake Roberts continued, saying things came to a head during a European tour when The Undertaker had to have some words with the WWE Superstars at fault:
“At some point, we went to Europe and Undertaker heard them getting on me with some pretty, pretty hot and heavy comments. You know, ‘Pussy. You used to be a f*cking man.’ You know? yatta yatta yatta. You know, this, that, and the other. It was some pretty rough stuff going. And Undertaker used to sleep under the bus. You know, there’s a compartment for luggage and he goes in there and sleeps while they ran down the road. You know he’s a dead man, right?”
“So he had the bus pull over. And he got up and cut a promo in my favour. He told them You don’t want him to go back to being the guy who he used to be, he’ll kill every f*cking one of you. It was pretty rough man. And that was a really bad angle. Even Lawler didn’t want to do it. I didn’t know it at the time and Lawler didn’t want to do it. I thought he was enjoying it a little bit too much. And I had some harsh feelings for Jerry until him and I sat down and talked about it. Now we’re good.”
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