Jake “The Snake” Roberts offered up an interesting anecdote on a recent episode of his Snake Pit podcast. The WWE Hall of Famer mentioned that All Elite Wrestling pitched the idea of him using an animatronic snake instead of a live animal. The plans didn’t come to fruition because of the cost.
Jake said, “To have the snake move like a snake and come up and open its mouth and all that sh*t … I would love that. I wouldn’t mind traveling with that, put it in a small suitcase and throw it overhead.”
Roberts famously used a live snake throughout his career. He even brought one to AEW television once, using it to cover Brandi Rhodes. However, Warner Bros. executives were not happy about that, and put a complete stop to the live snake being used again. Roberts continued,
“They’re not going to let a snake back in the ring, period. They were really pissed off that we used the snake. I guess they told us that wasn’t going to be allowed, but we tried to do it anyway. They came down hard.”
Roberts admitted that using the animatronic puppet wouldn’t work with today’s characters because the puppet “don’t come across as strong as the counterpart would be.”
