It's WrestleMania season once again. This will be the 40th edition of the annual wrestling extravaganza and as usual, we will celebrate by playing with our toys. This year, we celebrate with the help of one of the most notorious and easily recognizable wrestler's of the 1980's and 1990's, Jake 'The Snake' Roberts. Though he began his career earlier, my first memories of The Snake were his arrival in World Wrestling Entertainment, known then as the World Wrestling Federation, in early 1986. He made an immediate impact upon his arrival, defeating George Wells rather convincingly at WrestleMania II and then knocking Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat out with the same move during an episode of Saturday Night's Main Event. What set Roberts apart from the other heels at the time was that he wasn't much of a yeller or
screamer. He would speak slowly and in a lower register, with a hint of menace and evil in his eyes. He made you listen, and then acted upon those words. Perhaps his best set of promos took place during his feud in 1991 with 'Macho Man' Randy Savage. The same feud where Jake's cobra famously bit Savage's arm while horrified fans looked on. As a fan of wrestling, you usually cheer for the good guys. Such was my case as well at the beginning of my fandom. But, Jake was the exception. I was just pulled in by the way he spoke and loved his performance. I tried to capture some of his darkness with some of these photographs. Position my figure at certain angles so that the face would still remain a little bit in the shadows, where snakes like to hide. I also tried to recreate a few famous photos that I have seen of Jake over the years in this series as well. Jake fell upon some hard times late in his career due to various addictions, but he was able to beat them, with the help of Diamond Dallas Page and his DDP Yoga program, and turn his life around. Though the days of spiking an opponent with the DDT are long gone, he was inducted in to the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame back in 2014 and he still appears from time to time with All Elite Wrestling. The first photograph was taken at f/7.1, 1/160secm ISO 100 at 70mm and the second photograph was taken at f/7.1, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 24mm. I think I may have had a little too much fun with my toys while taking the photographs, so here are several more shots.
All of the photographs were taken with a solid white background and bouncing some flash off of the ceiling onto them. The action figure come from the Jakks Pacific Classic SuperStars Series and included the bag and snake along with it. Jake 'The Snake' Roberts was without a doubt one of the most influential wrestlers of all time and easily one of my favourites. Trust me.
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