Titus O’Neil On How Shaq Was The Inspiration For His Ring Name

Titus O’Neil wanted to be the Shaquille O’Neal of WWE, and he recently discussed how that helped determine his ring name. O’Neil recently appeared on The Dad Edge podcast and talked about how his ring name came from his son and his admiration for the NBA legend, noting that Shaq’s career path served as an inspitation for him.

“My youngest son’s name is Titus and Shaquille O’Neal is my fraternity brother, and he’s also one of my favorite all-time sports entertainers,” O’Neil said (per Fightful). “He did more than just play basketball. He was rapping, he was in movies, in every other commercial you could name, pushing every product you could name.”

He continued, “I felt that I wanted to be the Shaquille O’Neal of WWE where I didn’t want to just be known as a professional wrestler, I wanted to be a superstar that could do anything and everything. Put me in a movie, put me on the red carpet, put me at a football game, commentate, do whatever and I’d be just fine. That’s how I came up with Titus O’Neil. Of course, somebody thought that I should be Irish so they took the A out and put an I in.”