Jake Roberts Discusses Joining AEW, Tony Khan, Mentoring The Locker Room
Photo by Clayton Chase/Getty Images for Music Lodge
Legendary pro wrestler Jake “The Snake” Roberts did a recent interview with SportsKeeda to talk about a wide range of topics.
In this interview, he discussed who made the call to bring him into AEW (All Elite Wrestling) and more. Here are the highlights:
Whether he has been mentoring anyone in the AEW locker room:
“There’s a couple that have come [for mentoring]. I put my hand out, I went to each guy and said, “Look, man, I’m here for you. This ain’t about me, I’m here for you. If there’s any way I can help, if there’s any questions I can answer, please come to me.”
I’ve only had two people come to me. One of them had something that they really wanted to talk about and I was able to help them with interviews. I got them going in the right direction, anyway. I felt really good about that, he’s a young kid. His dad was a wrestler, “Mr. Ass” Billy Gunn. It was Billy Gunn’s son [Austin] that came to me and wanted help. That really made me feel good, man.
His dad is a superstar and Hall of Famer in his own right and you’re coming to me? I get that. Sometimes it’s easier to ask someone else that isn’t your dad… It was easy for me, my dad didn’t want to help. (laughs)”
Tony Khan bringing him into the promotion:
“My name kept getting brought up by people, but it was actually [Tony] Khan that said “I want him in here.” That’s quite a compliment there. That’s not the way I expected to be brought in, I expected it to be through Dallas or through Dustin [Rhodes], but it wasn’t, it was Khan who wanted me in there.
He’s the one that initiated the “let’s get him.” I did the little card-dealing gimmick I did for them [at Double Or Nothing], that was just a nice thing to do, where I dealt the cards out for that thing they were doing. But then to get invited to do this angle [with Lance Archer and Cody Rhodes) was much bigger. It’s going to be huge. We haven’t really started it yet. It’s yet to blossom into what it’s going to be. We’re going to do some more stuff this week.
They’ve gone back to the old-school way of doing things, which I love. That’s building something instead of doing it the WWE way where they build it the first part of the show and then end it by the end of the show. (laughs) This, people will remember, because they’re taking the time to build it properly.”