GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Let's just say this week's honorary Mr. Two Bits shouldn't find it particularly intimidating trying to whip The Swamp into a frenzy.
Earlier this year, Titus O'Neil played to 75,000-plus for Wrestlemania XXX at the New Orleans Superdome.
"That was cool," O'Neil said Monday. "This will be really, really cool."
In a previous life, O'Neil was known as Thaddeus Bullard and played defensive tackle for 44 games over four seasons for the Florida Gators from 1997-99 -- even served as UF's student body vice-president for a year -- then bounced around the Arena Football League until he found some steady work.
With World Wrestling Entertainment.
Five years later, Bullard-turned-O'Neil is a WWE star. One of those "bad" guys that everybody loves to hate.
On Saturday night, though, he'll be a guy everybody at Florida Field loves to love when he gets into an entirely different character before the Gators (1-0) take on Kentucky (2-0) in their Southeastern Conference opener. Maybe O'Neil wll trade in his singlets and boots for a George Edmondson yellow oxford shirt and white bucks. Maybe he won't.
One thing is for sure, O'Neil will put a center-ring spin on the ceremony when he becomes the latest Gator great to take on the new Mr. Two Bits pre-game tradition.
"The crowd is not the thing. I can handle the crowd," O'Neil said. "Going out there and trying to be as good as Errict Rhett and Danny Wuerffel, now that'll be the challenge. I'm a competitive guy, so I want to make sure mine is just as memorable when I do it. I don't know what it is I'm going to do, but by the time Saturday gets here I will definitely have figured it out."
The guy is a showman.
So yeah, he'll figure it out.
Earlier this year, O'Neil worked a WWE show at State College, Pa., home to Penn State University. The Nittany Lions have a chant: "WE ARE ... PENN STATE!" O'Neil did a pre-event video where he was shown doing the, 'WE ARE" half and then threw it to the crowd. The fans responded. "PENN STATE!" He repeated. They responded. He repeated.
Then, he interrupted the mass by answering his own question: "WE ARE ... GATOR NATION!"
"They booed the hell out of me. It was great," he said. "I did the same thing at Ohio State. They hated it there, too."
O'Neil, now 37, uses a similar irritating schticks to rile up the wrestling fans in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and all of the venues he hits in the South. And, they always boo.
Exactly no one will boo this week.
It won't be like the old days, when he took the field against the Volunteers or Bulldogs or Seminoles, but Titus O'Neil will be locked in and ready to give the Gators a show; a short, but albeit meaningful one.
For him and them.
"I'm really excited about it," said O'Neil, who will have his two sons, Thaddeus (10) and Titus (8) by his side. "It's one thing to be able to run through that tunnel as a player, but to come back and do something that's was first done by George [Edmondson] back in 1949? To carry on that tradition? Yeah, that's definitely an honor."
