“I’ll Finish Him Off With the Bottle”: Shaquille O’Neal Gets Bashed by Charles Barkley, Ernie Johnson Retaliates

All hell broke loose in Studio J as the TNT analysts got their stunt training underway, during a recent episode of ‘Inside the NBA’. The crew undertook this dangerous task to promote the new movie, ‘Fall Guys’, which is based on the tough lives of stunt doubles. Things got messy when Shaquille O’Neal decided to perform some stunts himself, not knowing that Charles Barkley was cooking a plan, of his own.

The segment began with teaching the panelists simple tricks like falling, punching, and kicking. However, things quickly spiraled out of control when objects like chairs and bottles came into the picture. Initially, Chuck did not seem interested in joining the activity, however, he quickly took it back once he heard that O’Neal would be the one on the receiving end. Co-host Ernie Johnson also decided to chip in as he came up with a plan against the big guy,

“You [Charles] hit him with the chair; I’ll finish him [Shaq] off with a bottle.”

To no one’s surprise, Barkley swung the chair full force as it crashed against O’Neal’s back, resulting in the latter screaming out in pain. Johnson, who was supposed to finish off O’Neal with a glass bottle, decided against it and turned on Barkley as the veteran journalist shattered the bottle on his co-panelists head.

Shaq kept his eyes on the prize, as he exacted his revenge against Barkley by executing a chair-breaking trick on Sir Charles. While all precautions were taken before the filming of the segment, the entire incident left the TNT crew in splits. They even had veteran stuntman and stunt director Bryan Cranston, who taught the crew the tricks of the trade. Moreover, Shaq is always the first one to volunteer, whenever it comes to such physical activities.

Shaquille O’Neal is an adrenaline junkie 

Being worth half a billion dollars must come with ‘otherworldly’ health insurance because O’Neal keeps putting himself in danger, something Shaq seemingly finds “fun”. Just last year, during a game segment of the show, Shaq decided that a normal game of darts wasn’t stimulating enough, as the Big Fella decided to place himself to the left of the dart board. A simple miss could spell horrors for him, but the Diesel continued to egg on his co-panelists, even challenging Barkley to throw one from the left side.

https://twitter.com/NBAonTNT/status/1611249068076060675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

While the dart incident was surely “dangerous,”  everyone seemed to have gotten a laugh out of the whole situation. But pulling shenanigans like this is a regular occurrence for the 7’1″ gentle giant. 

In 2023, Shaq even filmed an epic recreation of the popular “This is Sparta” scene from the movie ‘300’. The only twist on the entire situation was that Shaq was actually on a yacht, and hopefully, the man knew how to swim, as O’Neal both literally and figuratively kicked the man off the boat, an event that the Laker legend even posted to his Instagram. Hence, this is not new for the big guy and seems to be a by-product of his extremely physical playstyle in the NBA.