If you live in the United States, you know that this Thursday is Thanksgiving, a holiday established by Abraham Lincoln himself to coincide with Survivor Series. This year, I’m just thankful to be eating again, having spent much of the past week in the hospital where my idea of a great meal was two different types of broth.
But if you were watching Friday Night Smackdown back in 2013, you too got to feel just a little ill around Thanksgiving.
Gathered backstage was the whole roster – the nonessential members, at least – for a feast of Thanksgiving leftovers.
Even the Gobbledy Gooker was there, meaning he had now survived a record 24 Thanksgivings.
Vickie insisted that this year, for the first time in the history of massive food spreads in WWE, there would be no food fight. But to keep everyone happy, she would be holding an eating contest.
And not just any eating contest, but a food-eating contest! No eating napkins for you! The rules for this food-eating contest? Each contestant would h—
— oh, no time for that! The food-eating contest was starting!
With this eating contest (food-eating contest, that is) just having been announced, everyone just assumed it was going to be between just two people, and that those two people would be Titus O’Neil and the Great Khali because they happened to be seated next to each other.
Immediately, the two started shoveling food into their mouths as fast as possible. In Khali’s case, Hornswoggle helped out, too, shoving dinner rolls between the Punjabi Playboy’s supple lips.
Both men ate pie, turkey, spoons – no scratch that last one, this is specifically a food-eating contest – all in an effort to either eat more than the other before time expired…
…maybe? Again, there were never any rules given.
After about ten minutes, Khali collapsed into the pumpkin pie.
This made Titus the winner of the food-eating contest, having eaten exactly as much as Khali but without passing out.
His prize? A match with Cesaro on an overly-full stomach. And Vickie laughed and laughed…
In their person-wrestling match, Cesaro took full advantage of Titus’s condition, targeting his gut.
Titus, on the other hand, worked at about half-pace…
…and could barely let out his patented seal-grunt without spilling the contents of his stomach onto the canvas.
Cesaro moved in for the kill with his Cesaro swing, but after only about five rotations (or by the fans’ count, fourteen), Titus’s cornerman Darren made the save. Titus had lost the match but had kept his dinner, for the time being.
But no amount of prochlorperazine could cure O’Neil’s nausea tonight.
Soon, the food-eating contest caught up with Titus, who, after contemplating his next move long and hard…
…vomited food-vomit out of his food-gut and into JBL’s head-hat.
To be a pal, Titus put it back on JBL’s head when he was done with it. Well, not JBL’s head, but Michael Cole’s. A commentator’s head, at least.
For a guy who had beaten Khali in a food-eating contest less than an hour earlier, O’Neil didn’t fill up his impromptu barf bag very far.
Titus then grabbed hold of Zeb Colter and puked on his hair for good measure.
Titus O’Neil, it seems, can actually vomit on cue like former WWF superstar Darren Drozdov, and later claimed that the vomiting was completely ad-libbed. But to believe that, you’d have to think that:
1) WWE planned a whole dumb comedy segment without a punchline, and
2) WWE was cool with O’Neil creating an unsafe work environment by vomiting on his co-workers.
Remember, a few years later, Vince McMahon would suspend O’Neil for 60 days (including Wrestlemania) just for grabbing the chairman’s arm during a segment.
But Titus didn’t just grab but vomited on a bunch of different people who weren’t McMahon, and Vince thought that was hilarious?
Okay, I’ll believe that.