The resurrection of Jake 'The Snake' Roberts including DDP

[BrAinPaiNt]

Link to full article...
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/diamon...on-of-jake--the-snake--roberts-152019556.html

Not really into Wrestling now. But used to enjoy it. This is a great read for old fans. And it seems like DDP, Diamond Dallas Page, is a really good guy.

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SMYRNA, Ga. – In the tiny second-floor bedroom, there's a pile of Jake "The Snake" Roberts action figures on a table, plastic muscles ripped and bulging, snarls on tiny faces. Above them, on the wall, are signed comic-book-style cartoons of Jake The Snake fighting atop the Empire State Building and deep in the heart of the jungle. All around the room are photographs of Jake The Snake wrestling in some of the world's largest arenas against fellow iconic wrestlers.

It'd be a hell of a tribute to the man, were it not for Jake the Snake himself writhing in the bed in the center of the room.

It's a summer morning outside Atlanta. Jake Roberts, unshaven, his long hair matted, is lying in the bed, devastated, alone. He'd been clean and sober for eight months, drying out and cleaning out and trying to resurrect his life and his career. But he's just fallen.

 

[Hoov]

Haven't watched wrestling in a long time either.

I remember back in high school the debates were always about wrestling being real or fake - die hard fans would insist the matches were real and not scripted and get so worked up if you thought otherwise. It was kind of fun to push their buttons.

My personal favorites were Macho Man Randy Savage and Dusty Rhodes - I always liked the more coloful characters, thats kind of true in real life too.

 

[JohnnyHopkins]

Man, that was a good read. Thanks BP!

 

[MichaelWinicki]

Nice article.

Thanks for posting Brain!

The first time I watched Jake "The Snake" wrestle was in the Mid-Atlantic area around 1980. This was prior to the hauling of the snake to the ring thing. He was a good worker.

 

[Section446]

DDP is the man, those were the good days of wrestling.

 

[BoysFan4ever]

I see wrestlers dying all the time in the news. Is it because of drugs or the toll on their bodies?
That must be a very hard lifestyle.

 

[Hoofbite]

I've followed it on YouTube. It's pretty amazing.

DDP has been working with Scott Hall over the past few months. Hall was in bad shape, abusing out of control and had a hip that had basically given out for good. They brought him into DDPs house and started putting up some videos and fans everywhere started donating to get Scott a new hip. There's a segment where they're just stretching, light DDPYoga stuff and you can Hall's hip constantly popping from across the room. It sounds like someone just tapping on a table or something......it was pretty crazy.

They passed their goal a few months back and Hall had a new hip put him. Guess he's reuniting with his kid who is on path to become a wrestler and is every bit the size of Hall

Pretty cool stuff for DDP to do. The Jake story is particularly amazing. If you know Jake's full story, it's probably as bad as it gets so it's good to see him turn it around.

 

[trickblue]

I grew up in Bossier City, LA... wrestling was huge in neighboring Shreveport. Grizzly Smith moved to Shreveport as he had a couple of years stint there...

I had a friend that lived on the other side of town and when I would go there we would go down the street and play with Grizzly Smith's kids.

Come to find out, the kids later became wrestlers Sam Houston (we called him Mike) and Rockin' Robin. Mike was kind of a brat and when we would threaten to go home, he used to tell us if we did he would go get his daddy. For those that didn't know... Grizzly Smith was 6'9" 350+ plus pounds and we were terrified of him.

Their older brother would visit from time to time and he was really mean to us younger kids... turns out that was Jake "The Snake" Roberts. I didn't know that until last year...

 

[Phoenix]

DDP really is a tremendously fine human being. Someone posted a video of him helping a really out of shape fat dude who could barely walk any longer get to the point of being in shape and running full speed...it was a very uplifting video story.

 

[TellerMorrow34]

DDP is a really great guy. It's pretty awesome of him to help people out like this.

As for the question above about the wrestlers dying...I believe the vast majority of why you hear about them dying young is the damage they've done to the bodies either from being on drugs still or even from years of damage earlier in their lives during wrestling that causes their deaths.

Guys like Curt Henning, Eddie Guerrero, and such died from things that I believe were basically attributed to their years of drug and drinking prior. Both were clean and sober, and had been for a while, by the time they died but the years of the abuse had already taken it's toll.

Now a lot of the drugs and drinking and of course huge amounts of pain killers used is a direct effect from the travel and the wear and tear on their bodies. A lot of them wind up doing a lot of those things just to get by or to cope with the lifestyle they've chosen to live.

Wrestling, especially if you're a top guy in the WWE, is a huge grind. THe top guys are generally on the road 300+ days a year wrestling every single night somewhere. It's rough on your body.