Jake Roberts Remembers His Snake Accidentally Biting Andre the Giant

In an interview with Wrestling Inc, Jake Roberts spoke about how Andre the Giant reacted when Jake’s snake accidentally bit him during a segment. Here are highlights:

On how he’s feeling at 65: “Well I just worked out and I feel pretty good. I’ve got some issues with my hands as it seems being hit in the head too much is not good for you. I have a constriction thing in my hands where it’s painful and curls my hands up. So, I’ll have to have surgery on that where they’ll clip the tendons on my fingers and lengthen them out. Hopefully that’ll take care of that but I don’t know the length of recovery time will be. But I’m not really worried about it as you don’t use your hands much while talking so I’ll be alright,” said Roberts who added that he has an upcoming comedy tour in Australia. I’m really gonna have a good time and I’m gonna take my oldest daughter over there with me. We get a chance to spend some father-daughter time and she has an amazing story to tell and needs to get it out there.”

On his one man shows: “They are hilarious. It’s crazy how easy it is for me. For a lot of comedians, they have a list of things they wanna talk about, but I don’t. I just go out there and say, ‘How y’all doing’ and we go from there. Back in my day you didn’t go out with a set plan. You felt the audience and tried to feel what they needed to have a good time and you gave them that. That’s what I do with these comedy shows as I see what direction their leaning towards and go from there. Lots of times I don’t tell the same thing on two shows in a row. “I’ll probably starting putting them out on different things like Amazon. We’ll see.”

On if Andre the Giant was really scared of snakes: “Not at all. In fact, one night a snake got him and broke two fangs off in his shoulder and I was afraid to go into the locker room as I thought Andre might kill me! I walk into the locker room and peak around the corner and go, ‘Andre are you okay?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, why?’ I go, ‘Well the snake bit you’ and he goes, ‘Oh yeah, the snake was hungry!’ and just laughed about it. Then Rick Rude walks over to Andre who’s playing cards and he pulls out one fang and then another fang that’s five inches long and puts it on his shoulder and Andre just laughed. I’m like, ‘Rick, don’t do that. Please don’t piss him off’ and he just laughed about it. He thought it was funnier than hell. He was a great performer and what an honor it was to be in the ring with him. It didn’t bother him and he thought it was funny. And I thought it was funny too because he said I could.”

On if his return to WWE in 2014 was his biggest career moment of the last decade: “No, because you’ve gotta consider getting into the Hall of Fame as my biggest moment. But it meant a lot to be invited back because drunks and alcoholics have a way of endearing ourselves to people by the things we say when we’re drunk and high. I had done plenty of that and I’m sure they hadn’t forgotten all of it but they were still big enough to overlook that to invite me into the Hall of Fame and the Old School thing.”

On CM Punk sitting down at Old School RAW to give Jake his moment: “I didn’t really expect that out of him because I didn’t know what type of guy he was. That was special even if he did cause Ambrose to laugh because he told Ambrose the snake sh*t on you,. Ambrose started laughing which is something you normally wouldn’t do when I put the snake on you. It was funny.”