You may not think Jake “The Snake” Roberts would be a candidate for a SQUASH of the Week, but I’m here to tell you the dude was pretty awesome on his old weekly outings on the likes of WWF Superstars and Wrestling Challenge. Today, let’s discuss the time he battled the champ.
Namely, Joe Champ, who to the best of my knowledge never held any title belts. But he was a big dude and had a pretty spectacular mullet.
Not only that, but he could stand up very vertically and withstand a shoulder block from “The Snake”. I mean, Roberts is pretty tall (guessing like 6’5″ or so?) and Champ is every bit his height. Gotta love Jake’s faux begging off motion there!
The fun continues as Jake gets the wrong end of another exchange and starts chuckling at his predicament. Like legitimately LAUGHING at what’s happening here. Holy crap to have been a fly on the wall before or after this match just to see what the plan was going in…and the results of it coming out!
Champ gets Jake up for a big ol’ body slam and attempts another when Jake decides screw this, play time’s over for this geek and starts throwing some of his awesome haymakers. Man Roberts always threw awesome punches.
Roberts corners him next, with a really nice looking elbow right upside the head. Somewhere I bet a young Bryan Danielson was taking notes.
Then it’s time for his set up move for the finisher, the short arm clothesline. I loved pulling that off in WrestleFest, didn’t you?
At this point the DDT is academic, as he plays the crowd like a fiddle before applying it. When folks bemoan that a DDT is now just a transition move, well…this is the reason why. It used to be so very much more.
Of course, Damien being thrown on top of his prone opponent follows. Gotta love that the snake was like “What the hell is wrong with you?” and immediately makes a beeline back to the bag. That would of course never fly today…but even with no Damien, Jake could always deliver when it came to squashing even CHAMP jobbers!