WWE Hall of Famer Jake Roberts spoke about his time in WWE on the latest edition of the DDP Snake Pit Podcast. The Master of the DDT revealed that his feud with Hulk Hogan was dropped because fans began chanting for Hogan to be DDT’d, which upset WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. Highlights are below.
How he dropped Hogan with a DDT on a snakepit segment:
“We did a thing on snakepit and he’s talking, I’m like, ‘well what do you think of a python?’ He’s like ‘the biggest pythons in the world are right here,’ and he does his sh-t,” Roberts said. “And you know, it went on and I’m like, next week we’ll have a tape measure. We’ll see who’s got the biggest pythons’. So next week they’ve got a weigh set up out there for Hogan to pump up with. So we measured his arms, it was a gimmick tape. 21, I measure the snake, 21 and a half. So Hogan lays down on the bench and starts working out. Measure again, 21 and a half, it’s the same as the snake. He goes, ‘brother, these pythons are going to pump up a little bit more’. And he starts to work out again. Well, I’m pissed off, so I DDT him, which had the same result that it did with Steamboat. Split his skull, you know, he’s laying there bleeding, I walk off the set.”
How Vince McMahon was happy with the segment and predicted big money for a feud between the two:
“I walk off the set to the back, Vince grabs me and hugs me, ‘oh Jake this is going to be magnificent! Oh God, the money you guys are going to make’,” Roberts mentioned. “And I’m sitting there going, ‘finally, finally my dream man, it’s happening, thank you, Jesus. I’m pissing myself. I’m so happy. He says, ‘stay right here with me’. I go, ‘what for?’ He goes, ‘the people, they’ll start chanting Hulk, Hulk Hulk. He’s going to come to his feet, he’ll rip his t-shirt off, he’ll scream, beat his chest, and he’ll come looking for you. We’re talking about going straight to the bank with all of this. Jake, thank you.”
Says fans started cheering for DDT instead of Hogan, which made Vince upset:
“And he shakes my hand. We stand there and we stand there. Then Vince starts to look around like what the hell is going on. He looks out, Hogan’s waiting for the people to start chanting. The people did. They started chanting, ‘DDT, DDT’. And Vince went, ‘you’re screwed’. ‘What do you mean I’m screwed?’ He goes, ‘that’s not what we want.”
Says he and Hogan sold out a ton of shows, but Vince didn’t care because they wanted to correctly market their biggest star:
“So they gave us a couple of shots, they sent us to Portland, Maine, sold out, set the record. Went to Montreal, sold out when it hadn’t been sold out in years there before. Sold it out, turned them away, no cameras. Here’s what happened in the matches. ‘DDT, DDT’. Vince says, ‘that’s it, no more’. ‘What do you mean no more, we’re sold out, we turned away people’. He goes, ‘I don’t give a d-mm, that’s not what it’s about’. How much better can you get than a sell-out? The WWE didn’t care about sell-outs. It’s all about marketing, that’s where the money’s at. Vince used to say he didn’t give a sh-t how many people came to the building.”
(H/T and transcribed by Wrestling Inc.)
