1) The idea of having a snake's mouth on me - regardless of whether or not it was venomous - made my eyes roll into the back of my head. I literally want to vomit just thinking about it now.
2) My memory was that the snake was on his arm for a shitload of time. That added revulsion to sheer immediate terror.
3) Even at the age of 12, I always understood Jake the Snake's cobras to be a thinly veiled extension of his penis.
(cf.
)
So in other words, this wasn't just your average feud match between an alcoholic and a steroid junkie (which, quite frankly, was pretty standard). This was some form of illicit, metaphoric, mid-ring coitus. And I didn't want to believe it.
12 Year Old Self: Oh really, WWF - you're trying to tell me that this man is gay?
12 Year Old Self: Nice try, but not happening. I watched his wedding.So again, this memory really caused me some issues.
Here's the kicker, though - when I brought this moment up with a bunch of buddies (many of whom watched as much wrestling as I did) none of them remembered it. Apparently, it never happened. And that's when I got really scared, because now my brain was generating phobia-ridden, homoerotic wrestling narratives that were rivals to the phobia-ridden, homoerotic wrestling narratives that WWF generated, only that these were my phobias and I wasn't getting paid for them.
So I'm pretty happy that a recent YouTube culling of the Roberts/Savage feud unearthed this moment that supposedly never happened.
Admittedly, this is still pretty disturbing, especially when you get into the semiotics of it. Snake (Damien) as devil, snake as penis, snake as poison, penis as poison, Jake the Snake as latter day Christ Figure, Miss Elizabeth as feminine divine, Slim Jim as penis, etc, etc, etc. Bottom line, this clip is a hair's breadth away from being a conservative allegory for how gayness is spread.
And did I mention that it appears the snake is basically killed during the course of the rumble that follows?
Until three days later.
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