In the end, Jacobs was glad to be acknowledged.
Game Changer Wrestling and Orange Crush presented the second installment of The Indie Wrestling Hall of Fame ceremony on April 2nd in Los Angeles, California. Honored in this year’s class was Cheerleader Melissa, Christopher Daniels, Excalibur, Jimmy Jacobs, Mike Modest and Paul London.
Episode #309 of Straight Talk Wrestling featured an interview with Jimmy Jacobs and he explained his initial mixed feelings about receiving the honor. When he was contacted by GCW owner Brett Lauderdale, he thought he was going to be asked to induct Alex Shelley into the Hall of Fame. Shelley was ultimately who inducted Jimmy.
On the lead up to it, Jacobs’ thoughts leaned towards it feeling like a consolation prize for those who did not make it on a mainstream level. He then began to feel good about being acknowledged.
Yeah, it’s interesting man (going into GCW Indie Hall of Fame) and I touched upon it in my Hall of Fame speech. I don’t know if people understood exactly what I was saying at the beginning of it. But, as a wrestler, we’re all our own worst critics on some level. Actually, when I first got the text from Brett (Lauderdale), I thought he was gonna ask me to induct Alex Shelley. I thought that was what he was going to ask me first and then he said, ‘Would you wanna go in this?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ But then I had a lot of different feelings about it. It’s like the Indie Wrestling Hall of Fame. There’s no bigger consolation prize for mediocre careers than out of all the guys that didn’t quite make it on the mainstream level, you’re at the top of that. It’s like a real back-handed compliment to the insecure part of you, right? And then you go, well, there’s like 100 guys that should be getting in this before me. But then you just go, well it’s cool. It’s cool that someone is acknowledging you and I think on some level, that’s all-all of us want, right? We all just wanna be seen by the people in front of us. We all just want a certain amount of validation. Sometimes it comes from a place of lack but sometimes it’s just what we are. We’re the kind of beings that want to see other people and be seen by them. I say that in the Avatar sense. I see you, capital ‘S’, in the sense of namaste. The divine in me sees the divine in you. I see past all the insecurities and the walls that we build up and I see the unique expression that you are, right? Because we’re all unique expressions of this one consciousness that underlies reality and I think we all just want that. We all just want for the people around us to go, hey, you’re okay. You go, yeah? Am I okay? Yes? I am? I don’t have to keep putting on a show for you? I don’t have to bring out all my coping mechanisms? I don’t have to put on this face and pretend I’m this character anymore? I can just be with you and my existence is just enough? Just me being me? And I think that’s all we want and so in that sense, it’s a long way of saying, it was nice to be acknowledged and you don’t know how the people see you, right? You don’t know how the people see your career at all and especially, I’ve got a real complicated relationship with my career. I’ve seen a lot of my friends go on to make a ton of money and perform at the absolute height of the business and I go, I never really did that and it’s like, sometimes I feel like my whole career is a consolation prize of going, oh yeah, but you didn’t quite, but you didn’t quite and so it is nice to be acknowledged even if it is just like, hey, you’re a charity case. Jimmy will appreciate this. Let’s acknowledge him which maybe that’s what it is (Jacobs smiled). I don’t know, right?
Present day, Jacobs is working behind the scenes for AEW. He had previously been with IMPACT Wrestling from 2017-2023.
He was asked what was a moment or story that got him excited during that stretch and he recalled seeing Matt Sydal beginning to put the pieces together promo-wise.
You know what I was excited about that never — he left right after us and never just got a good opportunity to get back in the mix of things was Matt Sydal. Matt Sydal was never a good promo. He was always a very good wrestler, very good performer but never a good promo and right at the end of his IMPACT run, he was starting to do this, like a little bit of new age Yogi sort of thing and I thought his promos were like, yes! You finally found your voice and he left real shortly thereafter and so we never got to really get into it and that was one that I got excited about. Again, it’s cool to see guys who struggle to put sentences together and deliver something meaningful, like all of a sudden click into something that they go, yep, I can say this all day long. Yeah, Sydal is another one and it just never… yeah.
On the 6/22 IMPACT Wrestling on AXS, IMPACT World Champion Alex Shelley superkicked Jacobs. To read more from that show, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Straight Talk Wrestling with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
