NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal had Jon Anik starstruck right before he was about to go on the air.
The UFC’s lead play-by-play commentator was unexpectedly greeted by O’Neal as he was getting ready to deliver an intro during a UFC event – a moment that remains memorable for him to this day.
“I’ve had one moment like that, and I will never forget it because he’s one of my all-time favorite athletes,” Anik told MMA Junkie Radio. “So I wasn’t doing the standard pay-per-view open, but you may have noticed over the last two years or so, I’ll have certain situations during the broadcast where I do like a standup on camera where I’m sort of close to the crowd, and I’ll memorize something, and then I’ll deliver it and throw to a feature.
“So I’m getting ready in my standup position to do one of these, and I look down, and there’s a big hand reaching out to, like, give me a fist bump. It’s Shaquille O’Neal. If that doesn’t fire you up to fist bump that dude and then deliver to camera, right? I’m not sure how I delivered. It was probably one of the greatest deliveries of my life, right? It gave me a lot of confidence, the good kind of nerves. …Only one real instance where a celebrity was, you know, in sort of my frame of mind as I was just about to deliver something, and that would be the great Shaquille O’Neal.”
You can watch Anik’s full interview in the video below.
Jon Anik recounts time Shaquille O’Neal fired him up before delivering UFC intro