Former WWE writer and ROH performer Jimmy Jacobs recently appeared as a guest on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Talk Is Jericho, for an in-depth interview. Below are some of the highlights.
On his short-lived run as an in-ring performer for WWE in the past: “My first time wrestling in a WWE ring was in 2005 when I wrestled Eddie Guerrero on SmackDown. They were doing a program with him and Rey Mysterio, and I was just at the show hanging out with my buddy Paul London in Pennsylvania, and they needed someone to work with Eddie. Couple of guys had seen me before; they looked me up and down and told me that I was working with Eddie Guerrero tonight and it was an awesome experience. I was 21 years old. I had attended the show not expecting to work and then all of a sudden I was in a match with one of the best performers ever.”
On Eddie Guerrero: “I went up to Eddie Guerrero and introduced myself and told him that I think we are going to be working together tonight, and he thanked me for wanting to be in the match with him. He said that he wanted to apologize because the match needed to be all about him, but wanted to thank me anyway for doing it, like I was doing him a favor or something. He said to me that God-willing we will work together again in the future under better circumstances. He had given Rey the brainbuster on the steps the week before, he had taken Rey’s mask. This week he comes to the ring with Rey’s mask, and he wrestles this kid while putting on Rey’s mask on me and beat the s**t out of me while I had Rey’s mask on.”
On performing promos for Vince McMahon directly that he wrote during his time working behind-the-scenes for WWE: “I always tried to deliver it to him, but a lot of times he would just ask for the paper. Vince [McMahon] had a critical eye when it came to promos and he was big on words, and rightfully so. In Vince’s mind, sometimes I think the promos get flack from fans. In Vince’s mind, if you just left it for the performer to say what he wants to say, everybody is just going to say that I am going to kick your a**. Vince is very big on having creativity in there. I always felt that he had a very sharp eye and so sometimes I felt that my words, just by themselves wouldn’t hold up, so I always liked to perform them to Vince, and sometimes he liked them, sometimes he didn’t.”
On his WWE departure: “With WWE being the mecca of life, suddenly I didn’t seem to exist, and finding yourself, and being clean for the first time in a long time, which I am still, seven months ago. You find different parts of yourself. I found that I missed performing, and found that I wasn’t okay with being in a suit and tie, and having my hair slicked back, and not having jewlery in, and not having makeup on. That is part of who I am, since I was a kid trying on my grandma’s earrings. This is part of me; I struggled with drug addiction and depression for so long. It’s really weird because you don’t hear this often, but when you are in that state, you can’t trust that voice in your head. When you are depressed you just want to throw everything away. When you are on drugs you want to make this crazy leap, and then you think about you being high and saying that it’s a choice because of it. You spend a lot of time just with your head down and move forward and you can’t really make decisions, and then suddenly here I am finding things out about myself and making decisions so, look, am I a mastermind where i created the hottest angle outside of WWE to get myself fired from WWE? No, I wasn’t trying to get fired, but I wasn’t trying to not get fired.
“There is zero bitter feelings. I had a fun two and a half years there. I have zero bitterness of why they fired me. This past six weeks has been the time of my life. If Vince wanted to keep me around he would have kept me around. I don’t even know how that got in front of him, but he had made the decision that I needed to go. I was cool with that because I felt that I needed to go.”
Check out the complete Jimmy Jacobs interview from Chris Jericho’s “Talk Is Jericho” podcast at PodcastOne.com.