Jake The Snake Roberts Explains Fearing For WWE Hall Of Famer Mick Foley's Wellbeing

Mick Foley treated his body like a crash test dummy in his prime, giving a lot of his peers the jitters every time they saw him wrestle in the ring. On a recent episode of "The Snake Pit," fellow WWE Hall of Famer Jake Roberts recalled the time when he briefly aligned with Foley and The Barbarian in early '90s WCW during his feud with Sting and Nikita Koloff. Unfortunately, the program never took off the way it was intended due to logistical reasons, specifically Roberts' issues with Bill Watts and other members of WCW's front office. 

Reflecting on those jinxed plans, Roberts admits that he and Foley could have made a lot of noise as a tag team. "There was potential there, for sure," Roberts said of his pairing with Foley. At the time, Roberts was already a veteran in the industry while Foley was an up-and-coming star, and Roberts says "The Hardcore Legend" would constantly seek out his advice on certain nuances. "He was asking for my opinion on stuff — what I thought about this and that. He was a young guy wanting to learn, man. He was hungry."

While Roberts appreciated Foley's devil-may-care attitude, he was admittedly not a fan of Foley relying on stunts and hardcore matches to get himself over. "I loved Mick's reckless work, but I feared for his life and for his health. I don't know what kind of man I'd be if I'd seen somebody setting [themselves] on fire and not saying, 'Stop.' 

"What kind of man would I be? I'd pretty much be a big a–hole, you know? 'Don't set him on fire. Oh, go ahead, set him on fire. He'll be all right.' No, he won't. And that was my only ... I'm not knocking him and what he was doing. I just feared for his health and his well-being."