Shaquille O’Neal transcends basketball and such is his aura that his social circles are wide, even beyond the sport. Ask top WWE wrestlers and they would testify this. In the 1990s, when teams took advantage of Shaq struggling at the free throw line regularly by fouling him, he reached out to Hulk Hogan and pleaded for his help.
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It was generous of Hogan to actually go out of his way and two games later, sit courtside when Orlando Magic took on Chicago Bulls in one of the games. The move worked since NBA players at the time were actually scared of Hogan, who became famous after ‘body slamming’ Andre The Giant in the WWE.
“I’m not worried about the Three Stooges on Shaq’s back. I’m here to make sure there’s a fair game. If the Bulls get out of the line, or the Magic takes advantage of the Bulls, I’ll body slam both teams on the court just like I did Andre The Giant,” Hogan had told TNT’s Craig Sager.
“I got Shaq’s back because I won the WCW title right in this building. And Shaq was watching my back when I was here,” he added in the same interview.
While that episode established that Shaq and Hogan were fast friends, the basketball legend was shocked knowing the wrestler’s other side in a party he had hosted at his Orlando home once. Shaq spoke about that in a recent episode of the The Big Podcast with Shaq.
“So Hulk Hogan came in, a couple other guys came in, uh, Ric Flair… and Macho Man and all these [wrestlers] start eating my hors d’oeuvres and talking with each other,” the four-time champion shared.
“Growing up, I always thought they hated each other… It actually was a sad day for me,” O’Neal continued.
While it is good that Hogan has an extroverted, nice side of him outside the wrestling ring, Shaq was shocked to find out that the rivalries he enjoyed in childhood, were actually fabricated in real life.
Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair’s rivalry was a clash of wrestling icons —Hogan, the World Wrestling Federation’s larger-than-life “hero”, vs. Flair, the NWA/WCW’s slick, skeevy “Nature Boy.” Though teased in the WWF in 1991, their dream match never headlined WrestleMania. The feud peaked in World Championship Wrestling starting in 1994, with Hogan defeating Flair.
Their rivalry represented a battle of eras, styles, and legacies, so seeing the two engaged in camaraderie shattered O’Neal’s reality. O’Neal’s guest on the podcast, Karlous Miller also commented on the fact that passionate sports fans don’t see the same side of sports as compared to someone who works in the entertainment industry.
Miller explained that even in the NBA, while fans see opponents as people who hate each other, events following the game prove that isn’t the case. He shared how often both teams are seen together at the afterparty, which quashed Miller’s belief that they really didn’t like each other.
“Fans see this as like a blood sport. But they don’t even see the part like after the game, it’s the afterparty, it’s both teams in here and they kickin’ it,” Miller said. “They [are] the ones who make the rivalries, so once I saw that I was like ‘Oh, they [are] buddies.'”
That wasn’t the case while O’Neal was playing or in the decades before. The NBA used to be known for its heated, hateful rivalries because opponents genuinely did not like each other. This is why the likes of Michael Jordan and Charles Oakley have called the current generation of players ‘soft’ on several occasions.
Sport has changed in the last 25-30 years. Today, it isn’t about just rivalries but the athleticism and discipline required to make those intense, rather than just brawls on the basketball court. So modern players have shown, like WWE wrestlers, that rivalries do not need to go out of the court.
