- The snake is gnawing on the arm of Randy Savage,
who's helpless tied in the ropes.
♪ ♪
- Stay away from Jake The Snake,
and stay away from the cobra.
- Just take it easy, Gene; if you're good to me,
I'll make sure he's good to you, huh?
- You know, there would be Jake The Snake's python,
over there in the bird cage would be Koko B. Ware's bird.
The British Bulldogs had Matilda.
It almost looked like you walked into
a backyard farm with all the animals running around.
- If you keep playing with snakes,
you got to expect one thing, you're gonna get bit.
- In 1991, Savage and Elizabeth would get married.
But it was the reception that turned
the sports entertainment world upside down
because of one Jake The Snake Roberts.
- Aw, beautiful. - Is that gorgeous?
- I'm gonna save the ribbon. - Ahh!
- And if you guys remember what went down there,
Jake crashed the wedding reception
which would lead to a cobra
biting Macho Man Randy Savage.
♪ ♪
- Yeah, you with the orange hat out there.
You are nothing but a gutless, stinking coward.
I'm standing right here waiting on you.
- No.
- Randy, he's one of the most intense guys I've ever met.
And he came up in that era, there was no guaranteed money,
lots of competition for spots.
And so he didn't trust anybody.
- That snake better be de-venomized.
It better be.
- They are having a meeting, and Randy said, "Okay,
"but first I wanna see the snake bite Jake,
"and then we're going to wait a little while
and see how Jake is."
- I had to pull my damn pants leg up
and let that son of a bitch bite me.
Randy wouldn't let him drink any water,
wouldn't let him do anything
because maybe he would have, uh, a potion,
you know, ah, something.
- Anti-venom.
- He came back in about 15 minutes saying,
"How are you feeling now?" I'm like,
"Dude, I'm freaking fine, man.
I'm just a little worried about you."
"Don't worry about the Macho Man."
"And now that you're okay, I kind of believe you, but, ah,
"make sure it's the same snake, huh?
I don't want no snakes changing."
Oh, my God. What have I got myself into?
- Wait a minute; the snake is ready.
Oh, the snake is biting him.
The snake is biting him.
- Even with them putting the X up there
and blocking it out, to me, that was even scarier.
Psychology is a very important part of my game.
Once you get into somebody's head,
you want to take them as far left as you can.
And them putting that X up there let their mind roll
and make it as horrid as their mind could make it.
- When you get people leaning forward on the couch,
you've hooked them.
- That shocked the hell out of me.
I mean, because if you know anything about snakes,
snakes do that.
But cobras do...
- It was chewing. It was gnawing.
- They bite on you, gnaw.
- And the snake was like, "Ahh."
That was okay with Randy.
- Finally, I did the lion tamer thing
where I pried the jaws apart, and the snake let go.
Vince sent Piper into the ring.
Piper's deathly afraid of snakes.
Piper is, like, 20 feet away,
"Vince said get it off of him."
You know, like, "What?"
- You bring an anaconda near me,
you know, I'm--I'm outta here.
- Definitely this gave us some childhood nightmares.
Scarred a few people for life.
- Yeah, I remember people coming backstage and saying,
"Did you see the crowd; there were kids who were
screaming and crying, you know?"
Everybody was so happy about that that--
you know, we scarred them for life.
- It worked. It worked. - You know, right?
You can--that memory is so vivid in people's minds.
- It was genius. I mean... - Oh, it was...
- It really--it was genius. - Incredible.
- It was genius. - You know, you still,
you know, still think back at that,
and you say, "They had a cobra."
And I know it didn't have fangs,
and I know it didn't have venom, but they let a cobra bite him.
You know? - Oh, yeah.
- Like, you're, like, "Oh, my God."
♪ ♪