There have been many great comedic duos in entertainment history — from Laurel and Hardy to Key and Peele. But none of them come close to what Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley pull off regularly to make fans laugh on live TV. One of the duo’s classic back-and-forth was aired around 10 years ago, when Chuck was part of the CBS television crew covering March Madness.
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During the ‘Tweet of the Night’ segment, Chuck read a post from O’Neal that said, “Charles Barkley your belly looks tired, you should rest in on the desk.” Barkley responded, saying, “That’s a funny guy.”
However, when the host of the show pointed out the grammatical error in the tweet, Barkley got his ammunition.
“Oh he’s not, he’s not a college graduate,” said Charles.
The panel immediately burst into laughter. Barkley then continued to roast the Big Fella for almost a minute straight by trying out his impression.
Chuck then clarified how he enjoyed Shaq’s company. He is “one of the more fun people I’ve ever worked with,” Barkley had said.
The conversation slowly moved on to O’Neal’s successful career, and Barkley took another dig at him, but this time he also laughed at himself.
“Oh my god, if he [Shaq] ever got my bank account, he’d just straight kill hisself! The little bank account I got compared to Shaq! Are you kidding me? He’s on every commercial! Got enough lotion to last the rest of his life! Got that cream soda! Spreading diabetes all across the world,” said Barkley.
One can of cream soda had 50 grams of sugar, Sir Charles dramatically claimed. Then he continued his rant on Shaq’s commercials.
Sir Charles wasn’t wrong either. During the peak of his fame, O’Neal was one of the most marketable athletes in the world. His fun-loving personality made him very popular among advertisers. His list of endorsements included birth control pills, pregnancy tests, junk food items, and a variety of other things that he may or may not have personally used.
Barkley often called Shaq out for incessant advertising
In a Halloween 2014 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Barkley revealed that he was tired of people asking him whether he’d seen Shaq or not. He was triggered when Fallon asked him the same thing.
“You can’t turn on the TV without seeing his fata** everywhere! People say, ‘Have you seen Shaq’?’ I see him every 5 minutes! He’s got a commercial on gold bars, he got the patch on his back. Now he got suits! It’s unbelievable,” Barkley had exclaimed.
Chuck sees his NBA on TNT counterpart at work everyday. So seeing O’Neal all over the television and media must’ve been a little overwhelming, if not annoying.
