What’s the story?
While appearing on Chris Jericho’s podcast, ‘Talk Is Jericho’, Batista admitted that he once advised current WWE roster member Titus O’Neil to leave the company.
The Background
Back in February of 2016, on the Monday Night Raw that saw Daniel Bryan announce his retirement from professional wrestling, Titus O’Neil had what seemed like a playful interaction with Vince McMahon on the stage as the show went off the air.
The incident, which you can view below, saw Titus pull back the chairman as he went to walk backstage, which at first didn’t seem that big of a deal.
However, the following day, WWE announced that Titus O’Neil had been suspended for 60 days for unprofessional conduct. The timing of this also meant that he would miss that year’s WrestleMania event, which many people, including Titus’ close friend Batista, thought was an extremely harsh punishment for his actions.
The heart of the matter
Speaking on the ‘Talk Is Jericho’ podcast, Batista spoke about this incident and reveals that he told Titus that he would’ve left the company if they had treated him the same way.
“I’ve given him advice over the years, some of it he’s taken, some of it he hasn’t. I told him he should have left the WWE. After he got suspended, I was just like, dude, I would’ve been out of there. I thought that was a conversation, Vince should’ve pulled him aside and said, ‘Don’t ever do that again and then it would have never happened again. It should have been a man-to-man type thing. If he had such an issue with it. I could see the point where he may, just bad timing.”
He went on to explain that he thought WWE were very disrespectful to Titus in their handling of the situation.
“The guy doesn’t have any bad intentions in his heart, man. He’s just such a good guy and so I hated it. I felt like it was such a slap in the face. I really feel like they spit right in his face. They also suspended him right through WrestleMania, you don’t do that. That guy busts his ass all year and then you take that away from him? Not only did he (Vince McMahon) not talk to him and tell him, ‘You shouldn’t have done that, man’, you suspend him, but he didn’t even do it personally. He had somebody else do it and then he fined him. Man up. That’s when you man up. He’s just so loyal to the company. You give him that respect.”
What’s next?
It’s been over a year since this incident took place so I imagine that it has been forgotten about by both Vince and Titus by now.
However, Titus recently found himself in a spot of bother again last week after posting a picture of rivals Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman hanging out together during WWE’s current European tour. Titus swiftly took down the picture from his Twitter and it appears that he will be facing no further punishment from WWE, at least you’d hope so. That’s not the only controversy though as he is also being sued by a cameraman for doing this.
Author’s Take
I completely agree with Batista’s opinion of this issue, although perhaps quitting the company would have been a step too far.
Someone like Titus O’Neil who has attracted positive headlines for WWE in the past, for his work with the homeless and his 2015 ‘Celebrity Dad of the Year’ award, deserved more respect from them. As Batista said, surely a quick word of warning would have sufficed in this scenario.
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