Shaquille O’Neal had to set the record straight when it comes to his relationship with Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who is also known as Joe Exotic. The Hall of Fame center appeared on the hit Netflix docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, and he was seen at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma, which was owned by Joe Exotic at the time. O’Neal was seen taking pictures with the animals, and he was then seen saying “Shoutout to Exotic Joe” and “I got two more tigers” on TNT’s NBA broadcast. Joe Exotic is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence on multiple charges including murder-plot-for-hire and illegally selling tiger cubs. O’Neal talked about his appearance on the show on his podcast, The Big Podcast With Shaq, and said he is not friends with Joe Exotic.
“I don’t harm tigers,” O’Neal said via ESPN. “I love tigers. I love white tigers. Do I put donations to these zoos to help these tigers out? I do it all the time. Do I own tigers personally at my house? No. But I love tigers. Listen, people are going to make their own opinions, but again, I was just a visitor. I met this guy — not my friend. Don’t know him. Never had any business dealings with him, and I had no idea any of that stuff was going on.”
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The four-time NBA champion also mentioned he visited the zoo a couple of times after his first visit. However, when he found out Exotic was involved in animal abuse, he didn’t return.
“So we go in there, and it’s a beautiful place, and the character that was there was Exotic Joe,” O’Neal said. “We’re there, and I dropped some donations for the tigers’ foods and all that. We take pictures with [the] tigers. We went back a couple times. Then we go back another time, and we found out that he’s involved with all the stuff, and then, actually, I stopped going.”
Joe Exotic has become a star due to the success of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness. Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, co-directors and writers of Tiger King, recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times and they said Joe Exotic loves the spotlight.
“He is absolutely ecstatic about the series and the idea of being famous,” Goode said after revealing the have contacted him the last few weeks. “He’s absolutely thrilled. I think he’s trying to be an advocate for — no surprise — criminal justice reform. He is in a cage and of course he’s gonna say that he now recognizes what he did to these animals.”
