All the while, Roberts suffered from debilitating pain. “I couldn’t squat down, I couldn’t get down on my hands and knees,” he told me. “I weighed 308 pounds. My daily workout was a crack pipe and a six-pack.” He holed up in a small home in Gainesville, Tex. The wrestling world kept its distance.

Image Jake (the Snake) Roberts with Page in 1993, before yoga. Credit... Photograph from Dallas Page

Two years ago, Roberts received an unlikely phone call from Diamond Dallas Page, one of his best friends from the circuit. Page had become an oddity even among wrestlers. He successfully used his own form of yoga, which he combined with more traditional strength-building exercises and calisthenics, to repair his injured spine and return to the sport an unlikely champion at 43. Page, who once wrestled in a purple vest and sported a long greasy mullet, now wore his hair closely shorn and traveled the country promoting what he called D.D.P. Yoga. He had already helped Shawn Michaels, a three-time world champion and one-half of the ’80s tag team the Rockers, use D.D.P. Yoga to manage his chronic back issues. Chris Jericho, a six-time W.W.E. champion, declared that D.D.P. Yoga had healed his herniated disc. Jerry Brisco, a 67-year-old W.W.E. Hall of Famer, said that Page’s yoga had done nothing less than help him “reclaim my life.” At least 40 current W.W.E. wrestlers swore by the program.

Over the phone, Page suggested that Roberts give yoga a try, too. “I was like ‘O.K., Dallas, O.K.,’ ” Roberts says. “I was trying to get off the phone so I could go pick up my drugs.” But Roberts eventually acquiesced, and within weeks he was attending daily sessions in Page’s Atlanta home. Page monitored his progress every day and posted inspirational clips to YouTube. Within a couple of years, Roberts had sobered up and lost weight; his body, once soft and inflexible, was lean and limber again.

Roberts, who is 59, walked to the lectern that April evening in a custom-made tuxedo with cobra insignia on the pocket flaps and lapels. He pounded furiously on his chest as the crowd exploded into a chorus of “Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake!” During his acceptance speech, Roberts acknowledged the detours his life had taken. “I walked away from the responsibilities of raising a family because I fell in love with something called wrestling,” he said. “I was a rotten son of a bitch. . . . And then all of the other problems start flooding in, man. Drugs and alcohol. Because you want to medicate the pain.” The Smoothie King Center had fallen silent.

“You’re a good man, Jake!” a fan shouted.

“You don’t want to carry on,” Roberts said, recovering himself. “Your career’s gone. All you have in your heart is shame and pain. And you can’t do what you love anymore, so what do you have left? Not much. Not much at all. And if you are alone, like I was, you make some bad choices.” He was growing teary. “But for some reason, one person sticks a hand out. And that person for me was Diamond Dallas Page.”