WWE News: Shaquille O’Neal Backing Out Of ‘WrestleMania’ Match

The first match announced for WrestleMania 33 didn’t involve titles or long-running feuds. The first match announced for this year’s big WWE event was The Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal in a battle of giants. However, after Big Show mentioned last week that O’Neal wasn’t taking things seriously, Shaq mentioned on his podcast that the WrestleMania match was not likely to happen.

According to Big Show, who has gotten in the best shape of his career, he was working hard while Shaquille O’Neal was seeming to play around. Wrestling Rumors reported that Big Show said if Shaq wasn’t serious, to not even bother showing up at WrestleMania.

“I mean, here’s the thing. We shot this off at the ESPY Awards, Shaq said he’s in, I thought this would be a good match for fans to see two giants go at it. And I see Shaq riding around, singing karaoke and stopping in at Krispy Kreme. I’m like, ‘Hey! If you’re not gonna take it serious, find something else to do!’ I’ve given 22 years of my blood, sweat and tears to this business and I’m doing this favor to Shaq.”

Big Show also said in the interview that this might be the very last WrestleMania appearance of his WWE career. Big Show enjoyed his biggest WrestleMania match against Floyd Mayweather and this could rival that – if Shaquille O’Neal takes it seriously.

According to O’Neal, there are other things at work when it comes to pushing this match out of WrestleMania and they stem from the WWE and not from him.

“It’s not my fault, that’s all you need to know. It ain’t my fault… Oh, it ain’t my fault. It don’t matter what they say. It has nothing to do with the Diesel and his management. That’s what I got to say, but, it’s not totally off yet but it’s not looking good.”

While all the photos have shown Big Show preparing for this big WrestleMania match, Shaq says that if the match does happen, he will be ready. He even said that he is about to start training for the match even though he doesn’t think it will happen. Shaq said he will train twice a day this week to get prepared just in case he competes at WrestleMania.

From the sound of The Big Show, it all comes down to Shaq not taking WrestleMania seriously. From the sound of Shaq, he feels the problems stem from possible contract reasons – but he says it is not problems on his side of the negotiations.

That seems strange because if the WWE was, in fact, planning this match between Big Show and Shaq ever since the challenge was made on the ESPY Awards, the contracts should already have been worked out. If the match is not in writing with only one month left before WrestleMania, Shaquille O’Neal is right in doubting the match till not happen.

The first big WWE confrontation came at WrestleMania last year when Shaquille O’Neal showed up as a surprise entrant in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal. Shaq went face-to-face with Big Show in the ring before everything broke loose. Both Big Show and Shaq were eliminated by a number of wrestlers.

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Then, at the ESPY Awards, on the red carpet, Big Show and Shaq met up face-to-face again. This time, Big Show challenged Shaq to a match at WrestleMania this year and O’Neal accepted the challenge. It would be huge since WWE hosts WrestleMania in Orlando where Shaq started his career with the Orlando Magic.

[Featured Image by WWE]