I'm not sure this is a great match. I thought it was comfortably a good one, just not sure it's a great one, and I'm not even sure it's a great Jake performance. But I know it was a mesmerising one. He was an incredible scumbag here. Brad Armstrong is a rock solid wrestler at his worst, who will bring lots of energy as a babyface even if he's sort of meat and potatoes in the overall sense. He's easy to root for, or at least the way he works is easy to root for, if you know what I mean. That wasn't enough for Jake though, who decided that if there was a ceiling on how much a crowd might want to get behind Brad Armstrong then there would be no ceiling on how much they might want to hate Jake the Snake Roberts. They didn't do anything particularly unique to start out. Jake would grab an armbar and yank Armstrong to the mat with the hair, the ref' would question him about it as the crowd got on his case, but Jake would obviously deny it, gesturing innocently like "Me?! Really?!" He basically treated Armstrong like a scrub and the longer it went the longer it felt like he didn't actually NEED to do all this cheating, he just...wanted to. It was a thing he enjoyed. He would drag Armstrong to the mat and muss up his hair, shouting "Braaaaad. Braaaaaaaaaad" in his ear, just bullying this kid in front of everyone. Armstrong fired back with a couple shots, but they mostly just annoyed Jake and Armstrong was always a bit too nice to do what needed to be done. At a certain point you almost have to fight fire with fire, even if it runs contrary to how you live your life as an upstanding American, and it looked like Brad just wasn't about that no matter how far he was pushed. Even then I don't think anybody in that building was more sick of Jake's shit than the ref'. This was probably as wound up as I've ever seen a referee, and that includes every match where Earl Hebnar loses the plot and nearly has a heart attack. Jake terrorised this poor guy about as much as he terrorised Brad Armstrong, though this was wholly psychological. The longer it went the more Jake cheated, and because the referee never actually saw most of it he was powerless to do anything, which enraged him even more. Then Jake would blatantly cheat right in front of him, like when he'd have Brad in an armbar and start pulling his ARMPIT hair. The ref' would scream in Jake's face and Jake would just grin and stare at him, unblinking. It was kind of disconcerting. Jake does slimeball as well as anyone but this was more sinister, like '91 WWF where he set upon a man with a king cobra. As someone who was an antagonistic wee bastard as a child I've seen the look of many a school teacher who's wanted to physically strike me, and I can tell you right now that this referee wanted to lay one on Jake's chin. It made the big payback spot about halfway in doubly awesome. After one too many hair pulls Brad had finally had enough, so he kipped up and dragged Jake to the mat by the hair, and when Jake got up in disbelief Armstrong punched him clean out the ring. Jake then pulled a rope out of his pocket, but as he slinked back in the ring everyone knew he had something in his hand, including the ref' who jumped all over him and actually managed to take it away! A victory for the little fella! In the end it didn't really matter. He had to raise Jake's hand anyway, because the DDT was inevitable, but referees in every profession take a hammering on the daily and for a change you maybe felt some sympathy for this one.
Jake Roberts & Nord the Barbarian v Dirty White Boys (Mid-South, 6/30/85)
This was a very different look at Jake. If you needed any proof that he was a changed man, our referee from the last match was in charge again here and not once did it look like he wanted to take a shotgun to the Snake. I actually don't know if Jake had even turned full babyface yet, but he and big Nord were working as such and Jake was so over by this point that it would've been impossible to keep him heel anyway. And this was a decent tag, in a year where Mid-South had about a thousand decent tags and on a show that featured an awesome RnRs v Midnights tag. You probably won't remember it months down the line, but you can't really go wrong either. Jake played face in peril for a while and he was really good at it. He milked the hell out of those near tags and Barbarian is always fun on the apron getting more and more agitated. Denton looked badass in this. All of his cutoffs looked sharp, he sailed face first into the mat off a missed headbutt, and he sold wanting absolutely no part of the DDT by not even letting Jake grab a hold of him. Usually Jake would at least make enough contact to set the move up before the would-be recipient would bold, but Denton wasn't inclined to let it even get that far. Maybe he thought Jake was out there SHOOTIN'. Better to be safe than sorry.
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