I want you to imagine, just for a second, achieving
the absolute pinnacle of your profession. You've
bled, you've broken bones, you've driven thousands
of miles across the country for basically zero
pay. Quite literally broken bones in this case.
Right, exactly. All to finally make it to the
corporate top of your industry, you land this
highly coveted writer's job at the biggest sports
entertainment company in the entire world. Which
is incredibly rare. Yeah. You have a corporate
badge. You have a real salary. And then you get
fired. Just completely let go. Not for a backstage
brawl and not for a botched performance on live
television, but for walking out into a parking
lot and taking a single Instagram selfie with
your friends. It sounds made up, but it's entirely
true. It really is. If I were uploading this
deep dive right now and had to come up with an
Apple podcast title for it, I think it would
definitely be the mind behind the mayhem. Jimmy
Jacobs, WWE, AEW, and the art of wrestling storytelling.
That's catchy. I like that. Thanks. And for the
SEO description to actually pull you in, I'd
write, in this deep dive, we explore the chaotic
and brilliantly creative career of professional
wrestler, writer, and producer, Jimmy Jacobs.
Also known as Christopher Scoville. Right. From
his teenage debut and legendary Ring of Honor
factions, to his time writing for WWE and producing
for All Elite Wrestling, we uncover how the Zombie
Princess mastered the art of wrestling psychology,
blurring the lines between violence, romance,
and corporate rebellion. That really is the perfect
summary for what we're exploring today. Because
when you trace his entire career path, you quickly
realize this isn't just a quirky story about
a guy getting fired over a social media post.
No, not at all. It's an absolute master class
in understanding how human psychology works within
a... wildly chaotic, physically punishing industry.
OK, let's unpack this. Today's subject is a man
born Christopher Scoville. But like I said, if
you've been anywhere near a wrestling ring or
watched national wrestling television in the
last two decades, you know him as Jimmy Jacobs.
The mission of our deep dive today is to track
an absolutely wild evolution. We're going to
follow his journey from a teenage kid moving
furniture to pay the bills while throwing his
body around in tiny Michigan indie rings, which
is a brutal way to Oh, completely. But we're
going to see how he becomes the mastermind behind
some of the most compelling, violent, and deeply
emotional storylines in Ring of Honor. And how
that translates to the big leagues. Exactly.
How he took all of that madness and became a
highly sought after writer and producer for the
absolute giants of the industry, WWE, Impact
Wrestling, and AEW. What's fascinating here is
how often professional wrestling is completely
dismissed by outsiders as just physical stunts
or choreographed fighting. People just see guys
in spandex jumping off ropes. Right, they look
at it and just see the acrobatics. Yeah. But
Jacob's career proves that at its core, the most
successful professional wrestling is really about
high -stakes psychological storytelling. 100%.
He managed to transition his sheer genius for
creating these unhinged, deeply emotional characters
for himself into actually scripting the entire
architecture of national wrestling television
shows for other people. Which is wild. It's a
completely different skill set. But he bridged
that gap seamlessly. And the way he started out
is just incredible. Take us back to the beginning.
Who is this kid before he becomes a corporate
mastermind? Well, we have to go back to June
of 1998. He is only 14 years old. 14. 14. He
gets involved with a local Michigan promotion
called Pro Wrestling Worldwide, largely because
his brother Nick was already working there. He
starts out doing anything they need. Just paying
his dues. Exactly. He's a general assistant.
He's doing color commentary on the microphone.
He's even acting as the company webmaster in
1998. Which, if you remember 1998, that is the
era of incredibly slow dial -up internet and
basic HTML coding. Oh, yeah. But by the time
he's 15, in May of 1999, he makes his actual
in -ring debut against a wrestler named Michael
Stryker. This is after getting trained by a veteran
named Joe Altano Ortega. Just try to put yourself
in his shoes for a second. Think about what you
were doing at 15 years old. Probably not getting
slammed on the wooden boards. Definitely not.
He was balancing, subjecting his body to the
brutal, repeated impacts of the wrestling mat
on the weekends, going to high school during
the week, and working as a furniture mover to
make cash. It's a heavy load. Literally. Yeah.
Imagine trying to finish your geometry homework
on a Tuesday night while nursing a bruised spine
from a weekend match. All while knowing you have
to go haul heavy couches up a flight of stairs
after school tomorrow. It requires a level of
dedication that most adults don't have. It absolutely
does. And it builds a very specific type of resilience.
You grow up fast in that environment. You have
to. And that resilience, combined with a very
stark early understanding of the harsh business
side of independent wrestling, leads to a pivotal
character defining moment a few years later.
Let's look at 2005. Okay set the scene. So Jacobs
has been working for Independent Wrestling Association
Mid -South or IWA Mid -South. He is highly successful
there. In April of 2005 he defeats Danny Daniels
to win the IWA Mid -South Heavyweight Championship.
So he's the top guy. He is technically the top
guy in the company but then later that year in
November at a completely different promotion
show, an AEW show, Jacobs takes that IWA mid
-south heavyweight championship belt, and literally
throws it into a garbage can right in front of
the live audience. Wait, hold on. I want to play
devil's advocate here for a second, because throwing
a championship belt in the trash in front of
a live crowd is the ultimate sign of disrespect
in this industry. Oh, it's nuclear. Isn't that
essentially career suicide? Why would any promoter
ever book him after he publicly trashes their
top prize just because a show got canceled? It
was a massive calculated risk, undoubtedly. But
you have to understand the economics of the independ
- in a wrestling scene. These performers are
paying for their own gas, their own travel, their
own gear. Right, there are no corporate expense
accounts here. Exactly. When scheduled shows
for IWA Mid -South were canceled that weekend,
it meant Jacobs was suddenly out of the money
he was relying on to survive. Oh, wow. By throwing
that belt in the trash. He made it very clear
he needed to get paid. He was telling the entire
industry, this piece of metal and leather means
absolutely nothing if the promoter isn't respecting
my time and my livelihood. That is such a raw,
real moment. Exactly. If you've ever felt undervalued
by an employer who expects loyalty without providing
stability, you can understand exactly why he
did it. Yeah, that's incredibly relatable. It
wasn't just a scripted wrestling angle. It was
a bold public labor strike. It was a statement
about respect. He showed he wasn't afraid to
burn a bridge. The foundation was already rotten.
And that willingness to blend raw, uncomfortable
reality with scripted fiction is exactly what
he brought to Ring of Honor, which brings us
to his legendary run there. The ROH years. Yeah.
Here's where it gets really interesting, because
Jacob starts pioneering this incredibly strange,
dark, emotional style of wrestling. It really
kicks off with a faction called Lacey's Angels.
Right. So he forms a tag team with BJ Whitmer,
and they're a managed by a woman named Lacey.
But he doesn't just play the standard role of
a guy trying to win tag team titles. He takes
the classic manager trope and turns it into this
weird toxic obsession, right? He completely turned
the standard wrestling narrative upside down.
Usually the manager is just a ringside accessory
to help the wrestler cheat to win the championship.
The classic bad guy tactic. Right. But here,
Jacobs's character realized that the championship
was secondary. What he created was a storyline
about parasitic codependency. Wow. He became
completely obsessed with winning Lacey's affections.
He was actively ignoring the matches in the ring
because he was too busy producing these demented,
highly dramatic music videos professing his unrequited
love for her. So he's taking this athletic competition
and turning it into an uncomfortable soap opera.
But a soap opera where people are actively hitting
each other with steel chairs. Precisely. And
he recognized that audiences actually connect
more deeply with vulnerable, flawed, even pathetic
human obsession than they do with a traditional,
straightforward athletic contest. And when that
tag team with BJ Whitmer inevitably splits up,
it leads to a feud that was terrifyingly violent.
We're talking about taking things to absolute
extremes. How far did they push this? Beyond
the pale, really. In March 2006, at a show called
the Dragon Gate Challenge, Whitmer attempts to
lift Jacobs up and drop him to the mat from the
absolute top rope. Okay. But Whitmer slips. He
drops Jacobs head and neck first directly onto
the top rope and the hard edge of the ring apron.
Jesus. It's a miracle he wasn't paralyzed. And
the craziest part, they just kept wrestling.
Because of course they did. Right. Then at another
show, Whitmer powerbombed Jacobs completely over
the ropes and directly into the front row of
the crowd. That is just hard to even visualize.
And this whole horrific chapter culminates in
a steel cage match in Jacobs hometown of Detroit,
where they basically just trying to end each
other's careers. It was a bloodbath. Jacobs actually
wins the match, but the physical toll is staggering.
He lost a tooth and he completely tore his ACL.
And keep in mind, an ACL tear is a devastating
injury for any athlete, let alone an independent
wrestler with no corporate medical coverage.
Yeah, that's life changing. It usually means
at least a year on the shelf, completely isolated
from the crowds, the adrenaline, and the paychecks.
But Jacobs was too smart to just disappear. What
did you? While he was physically unable to wrestle,
he kept the psychological hook in the audience.
ROH kept the storyline going by broadcasting
YouTube vignettes of him and Lacey taking a trip
to Chicago. He kept his character alive through
pure storytelling when his body was broken. Which
perfectly sets the stage for his eventual return.
And his return might be one of the most controversial,
shocking debuts in independent wrestling history.
Paint the picture for us. It's late 2007. It
is. And for months, Jacobs had been teasing a
mysterious faction through a cryptic blog called
Project 161. Really leaning into the early internet
culture. Exactly. He's building an online cult
following. Then, at an ROH pay -per -view, Jacobs
finally returns. But he's not alone. He brings
a terrifying legendary brawler named Necro Butcher
and a debuting, highly athletic Tyler Black.
Who fans now know as Seth Rollins. Exactly. A
massive star today. So they rush the ring and
attack the Briscoe brothers, who had just finished
an exhausting brutal ladder match. They actually
hoist J. Briscoe upside down, hanging him from
the lighting rigging high above the ring. That
is straight out of a horror movie. It really
was. And as J. Briscoe is hanging there, his
blood starts dripping down from the ceiling.
Oh, man. Jimmy Jacobs walks right underneath
him. dressed in a pristine white suit, and lets
the blood drip directly onto him while he holds
a microphone and announces the beginning of his
new faction, the Age of the Fall. It's pure shock
value. I mean, it was so intensely graphic and
disturbing that Ring of Honor actually had to
do a blood edit. They had no choice. Yeah, they
had to completely remove the raw footage from
the pay -per -view broadcast and the initial
DVD release because it crossed a line for their
distributors. But the thing is, it worked, didn't
it? The fans relentlessly demanded to see the
unedited footage. They absolutely did. And it
really solidified this bizarre, almost... emo
style of wrestling he was pioneering, we are
talking about the mid -2000s here. Think about
the cultural zeitgeist. Bands like My Chemical
Romance, Fallout Boy, this whole subculture of
teenage angst. Yeah, eyeliner and skinny jeans
everywhere. Right. Jacobs was weaponizing that
specific demographic inside a professional wrestling
ring. He wasn't just a standard bad guy who wanted
to cheat to win. He was emotionally manipulating
the audience. For example, when Lacey eventually
left him for another wrestler, Austin Aries,
Jacobs had a complete mid -ring mental breakdown.
The fans were literally in the arena chanting,
cry, Jimmy, cry. Right. And while they are chanting
that, he pulls out this trademark metal spike
he started carrying, and he repeatedly hits himself
in the head with it in this display of unhinged
despair. He wasn't using a weapon to knock out
his opponent. He was using it on himself. He
made the audience feel pity, disgust, and shock
all at the exact same time. That is heavy. And
it's worth noting he explored these themes across
different formations, too. If you look at his
brief run in MTV's Wrestling Society X, he and
Tyler Black actually competed as a literal emo
tag team called DIFH, which stood for Do It For
Her. He completely understood the cultural moment.
It's brilliant. He's literally turning heartbreak
and self -destruction into a weapon. And as we
move into the 2010s, he just keeps evolving this
dark persona. He heads over to Insanity Pro Wrestling,
or IPW, and he gets into a deeply psychological
feud with a young Jon Moxley. Who obviously goes
on to become one of the biggest, most violent
stars in modern wrestling. Oh, absolutely. So
Jacobs attacks Moxley and then cuts a promo telling
him that looking at Moxley is like looking in
a mirror. That is a profound statement when you
consider both men's reputations for thriving
in incredibly violent, psychologically taxing
environments. It set up a brutal dog collar match
in January 2011. Where the two men are literally
chained together by the neck. Yes. Jacobs actually
won the IPW World Heavyweight Championship from
Moxley in that match due to referee stoppage.
He was cementing his legacy as a guy who could
push physical and mental boundaries further than
anyone else. And he brings that directly back
to Ring of Honor, fully embracing the darkest
parts of his character. He starts using that
metal spike to literally freeze his opponents
in fear before matches even start. Just intense
psychological warfare. Exactly. He forms a stable
called SCUM alongside Kevin Steen, who later
becomes massive in WWE's Kevin Owens and Steve
Carino. SCUM stood for Suffering K. chaos, ugliness,
and mayhem. They win the tag team titles, they
completely wreck the company. But the really
fascinating part comes after SCUM disbands. Jacobs
forms a new group called The Decade. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, the formation of
The Decade is an absolute masterstroke of meta
storytelling. The storyline reason for the group,
which included Jacobs alongside veterans like
B .J. Whitmer and Roderick Strong, was a shared
incredibly bitter grievance. They were completely
sick and tired of watching younger wrestlers
use Ring of Honor as a mere stepping stone. Oh,
I see. They were angry that guys were leaving
for bigger companies and being celebrated by
the fans for it, while the loyal veterans who
stayed behind and bled for ROH year after year
were completely underappreciated. Think about
a time you felt completely overlooked. at your
own job. You've been there for years, putting
in the long hours, doing the heavy lifting, and
then you watch the flashy new hire walk in, take
the credit, and get the promotion you desperately
deserved. It's infuriating. Jacobs took that
exact universally relatable workplace frustration,
that genuine locker room anxiety, and weaponized
it for television. He was continuously blurring
the lines between real backstage politics and
in -ring storylines. He took the genuine anxieties
of the independent wrestling scene, the concept
of loyalty versus selling out, the devastating
physical toll versus the lack of financial reward,
and packaged it into a perfectly compelling television
narrative. And it worked. Amazingly well. And
that specific skill, the ability to weave reality
into fiction so seamlessly that the audience
forgets they are watching a scripted show, is
exactly what finally caught the eye of the corporate
big leagues. Which is exactly what gets him the
corporate job. This brings us to 2015. After
years of destroying his body, of tearing ligaments,
losing teeth, and bleeding for the art in places
like armories and high school gyms, Jacobs gets
the call. The big one. He joins WWE's creative
team as a writer. But what does it actually mean
to be a writer in WWE? Because he's trading a
bloody metal spike for a corporate badge and
a laptop. It is a radically different universe.
WWE is a publicly traded multi -billion dollar
media conglomerate. Being a writer there means
producing 52 weeks of live, high -definition
television a year. No off -season. Zero off -season.
You are sitting in sterile conference rooms formatting
scripts to the minute and pitching ideas directly
to corporate executives. You aren't just thinking
about your own character anymore. You are mapping
out the psychological beats for massive stars
like Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens. That's a
huge shift in responsibility. Massive. They didn't
hire Jimmy Jacobs to take physical bumps. They
hired his brain. They recognized that the guy
who architected The Age of the Fall and SCUM
understood episodic television and audience manipulation
better than almost anyone else available. So
he goes from bleeding in dog collar matches to
sitting in endless production meetings, wearing
a suit and navigating the corporate labyrinth.
And he does this successfully for a couple of
years. He's well respected behind the curtain.
And then we get to October 2017. The selfie.
The infamous firing. Let's set the scene for
you. There is a massive international wrestling
faction called the Bullet Club operating completely
outside of WWE. They're hugely popular on the
independent scene and in Japan. Huge merchandise
movers. Yeah. Massive. And they decide to stage
a rebellious tongue -in -cheek invasion right
outside the arena where WWE is taping their flagship
show, Monday Night Raw. They literally show up
in the parking lot with megaphones, rallying
the fans, and making a huge scene. Which is a
massive corporate taboo. When you work for the
industry leader, the number one unwritten rule
is that you do not publicly acknowledge the competition.
you maintain the curated corporate reality at
all costs. But what does Jimmy Jacobs do? He
walks out of the building, finds his old indie
wrestling friends who are currently leading this
invasion, smiles, takes a selfie with them, and
posts it directly to his Instagram account. And
WWE fires him almost immediately for it. They
let him go because he publicly associated with
an invading independent group shattering that
corporate wall. Now I have to ask, was he just
not thinking? Was it a momentary lapse in judgment
from a guy happy to see his friends? Or did he
know exactly what he was doing? Because getting
fired from WWE is usually a devastating blow
to a career. But he doesn't go on a bitter rant
online. He doesn't hide away in shame. He instantly
monetizes his own firing. He monetizes it. That's
the brilliance of it. Just days later, Ring of
Honor is holding a pay -per -view event called
Global Wars in Chicago. At the very end of the
show, Jacob suddenly appears in the crowd. And
what does he do? He takes another selfie with
the members of the Bullet Club who are performing
in the ring. Of course he does. He leans entirely
into the controversy, returning to the indies
with a brand new gimmick, calling himself the
Zombie Princess. He took a moment that would
have ended a lesser person's career, being publicly
fired from the biggest company on earth, and
instantly spun it into a marketing triumphant.
His creative genius just couldn't be cut down.
But he doesn't just stay an indie wrestler taking
selfies, he immediately jumps back into the production
side, right? Yes, almost immediately after the
WWE release, he joins Impact Wrestling. Initially,
he's an on -air talent managing a terrifying
monster named Kongo Kong, but he very quickly
transitions back into a vital backstage role.
He becomes a senior producer and a key member
of their creative team. And what does a producer
actually do? You have to understand. A producer
in wrestling is the essential bridge between
the writers who dream up the story and the physical
athletes in the ring. They map out the match
so that the physical moves perfectly align with
the psychological story they are trying to tell
on television. Got it. Because Jacobs had been
both a bleeding edge performer and a corporate
writer, he was the perfect man for the job. He
stays at Impact for years, deeply shaping their
television product. And then in 2023, he makes
another massive leap. He joins AEW All Elite
Wrestling as a producer and writer. Which is
an entirely different environment than WWE. AEW
at that time had this incredibly chaotic, collaborative,
almost startup -like energy. Right. It was the
perfect playground for a guy whose entire career
was built on harnessing chaos. He brings his
brilliant mind to yet another massive national
television product, helping agent matches and
format live broadcasts for a global audience.
He works at AEW until late 2024. And then in
a beautiful full circle moment, he makes his
return to Ring of Honor, the place where he made
his name. He even steps back into the ring for
a match against a seven foot three giant named
Satnam Singh. Which is just wild. It really is.
And it just proves that he never truly left the
performer side of himself behind, even while
operating at the absolute highest levels of television
production. It's a remarkable trajectory. He
never lost that fundamental connection to the
canvas, no matter how high up the corporate ladder
he climbed. So what does this all mean? When
you look at the entirety of Christopher Scoble's
career. Jimmy Jacobs is a testament to the sheer
power of reinvention. You have a 15 year old
kid taking brutal bumps in front of tiny crowds
in Michigan armories who somehow transforms himself
into the architectural mastermind of modern wrestling
television. It's an inspiring pivot. It really
is. He proves that understanding human psychology,
knowing exactly how to portray love, betrayal,
corporate rebellion, and raw angst is the most
valuable skill you can possess. Whether you are
bleeding in a dog collar match, producing live
television on the fly, or sitting in a sterile
corporate boardroom pitching a script, if you
know what makes people tick, you can control
the narrative. This raises an important lingering
question when you look back at his entire body
of work. We are talking about a creative genius
who spent his entire life meticulously scripting
suffering, chaos, ugliness, and mayhem for other
people to perform. He blurred the lines between
reality and fiction for decades, constantly manipulating
audiences into feeling exactly what he wanted
them to feel. So what happens when the line between
a scripted storyline and a real -life act of
rebellion completely vanishes? That is the million
dollar question. Think about that infamous selfie
in the WWE parking lot in 2017. Was it truly
just a genuine mistake by a guy who was happy
to see his friends? Or, knowing the brilliant,
calculating, deeply psychological mind of Jimmy
Jacobs, was it the master storyteller deliberately
booking his own spectacular, highly profitable
exit? That is something to really think about.
You never really know where the character ends
and the man begins. Thanks for taking this deep
dive with us.