Patrice O’Neal – The Legendary Comedian Who Wrote for WWE

Patrice O’Neal embodied comedy at a cellular level. His appearances on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn and the Opie and Anthony Show remain legendary, as does his near-perfect 2011 comedy special Elephant in the Room and his short-lived, cult radio classic The Black Phillip Show. O’Neal’s body of work is still being discovered by new fans over a decade after his death, but did you know the larger-than-life comic once worked as a writer for WWE?

O’Neal was brought aboard the WWE machine for a short time during the Attitude Era. A lifelong wrestling fan, Patrice found himself in the nucleus of the McMahon brand — flying on private jets with The Rock, Triple H and The Undertaker while being invited to writers meetings at Vince McMahon’s home.

“I was at [Vince’s] house in Stamford,” O’Neal described on the Opie and Anthony Show. “He just comes up, ‘Hello Patrice.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ Like a little girl, like, ‘Hi Mr. McMahon.’ He’s a powerful dude, but he’s a cold dude.”

Patrice recalled an interaction between McMahon and Tiger Ali Singh, who was in the middle of a controversial gimmick where he wore a turban as a foreign heel.

“[Tiger Ali Singh] said, ‘Listen, do I have to wear these turbans? My family said we’re desecrating…" McMahon is like, ‘You’re gonna put on those fucking turbans, I don’t give a fuck about desecration.’”

On another episode of Opie and Anthony, O’Neal also gave The Rock his props for being a genuinely nice guy behind the scenes. “The Rock was nicer than he should be," O'Neal said. "If I was this dude — not even on a star level, on a looking like him level — I’d be just an asshole, man. This dude is the nicest guy I ever met, it makes me sick … I’m just like, ‘Why is this guy not a dick?’ Because you want to be able to go, ‘Man, The Rock is a dick.’ But he’s just not.”

O’Neal wouldn’t last long in WWE, so few of his ideas made it to Raw or Smackdown. However, Patrice did appear in some backstage segments with Chyna on an episode of Sunday Night Heat in 2000. (Skip to 23:20, 35:10 and 48:47)

Patrice described an internal pressure to commit 100 percent to WWE, which would have ultimately taken him away from stand-up comedy. The comic infamously didn’t play well with others, refusing to play the Hollywood game or bend the knee to further his career.

“They’re very corporate, you have to be committed to their cause and I just wasn’t committed," Patrice admitted. "Stephanie McMahon fired me like six times. She kept calling me back and firing me, but she doesn’t realize that comics just get fired. I had a [stand-up] show and I said, ‘I can’t make it.’ She’s like, ‘What?! You’re committed [to WWE].’ I was like, ‘I met Steve Austin, that’s good enough.’”

“That thing is a cult," he continued. "You’ve got to do it their way or the highway and I just said, ‘At some point I’m going to be on the highway anyway, so let me just go now. Thank you so much.' It was genius, it was like winning some type of lottery. Vince McMahon — just seeing him operate was great.”