WWE’s Titus O’Neil on Being Nominated for Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian Award for Second Time

For the second year in a row, WWE Superstar Titus O’Neil was nominated for the Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian Award for his numerous humanitarian efforts in and around his home city of Tampa over the past year. And while the winner of the award was confirmed during Saturday night’s ESPY Awards, O’Neil will still be recognized at the 2021 Sports Humanitarian Awards Ceremony on July 12 at The Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York on Monday. The WWE Warrior Award winner recently spoke with ComicBook about his nomination as well as what drives him to help so many in his community.

When asked how it felt getting nominated for the second consecutive year (the only athlete to do so), O’Neil said, “It feels just as good as the first time around. I mean, it’s an incredible honor, but obviously, one of the greatest human beings of all time, and one of my greatest idols, my greatest idol, Muhammad Ali. Feels good not only because of my work being recognized, but I get a chance to kind of represent our company, and all the great work that we do as a company because I would not be able to do this stuff without this platform, and without some of my coworkers in some of those occasions that I’ve done things to push the needle forward for so many families.”

Check out the full interview with O’Neil below, and stay tuned for a special airing of the 2021 Sports Humanitarian Awards on July 24 at 2 p.m. ET on ABC.

For the fans who might not know, what have you been up to over the past year in regards to your humanitarian work?

Well, obviously with COVID, we had a lot of families that were struggling, those that were struggling prior to COVID even being an issue, and then those that were restaurant owners and business folks that were laid off or furloughed. So we did a lot with rental assistance, I think almost $1.8 million of rental assistance to families that were trying to stay in their homes with their families, and close to $2 million total in food supplies, a million dollars alone around Thanksgiving holiday to help families in the Tampa Bay area and make sure that they had hot meals.

But we fed teachers, we fed students throughout the summer. I got through my partnership with Microsoft, was able to get hundreds and hundreds of devices to make sure that those that were in underserved communities that didn’t have access to a laptop or an iPad so that they can do their schoolwork. We were putting it into the hands of those folks and they’re working with Hillsborough County School District alongside Microsoft to also get a significant discount to be able to help other students as well.

We did do our Back to School Bash last year virtually, ESPN ESPY-style, which we were able to serve 20,000 students with backpacks and school supplies. John Cena read his book, Elbow Grease. People can go in another room where Renee Young did a healthy cooking lesson, and then go to another room, and Sheamus did a Celtic Warrior workout for kids. And then we had obviously, the [Tampa Bay] Buccaneers, and [Tampa Bay] Lightning players, and [Tampa Bay] Rays players that were sending different shout-outs throughout the event.

So it was literally like you were sitting there watching a TV show and made it a fun, and engaging, and did prizes. I did my Super Moms event, which acknowledges mothers from around the Tampa Bay area. Some are single mothers, some are mothers that have beat cancer. Some are mothers that are law enforcement officers that might’ve lost their partner in the line of duty, or lost a family member in the line of duty. Me and Natalya, and Dave Bautista host. For the second year in a row we did that event. A very nice dinner, music live band, just giving these moms a great event to kind of kick back and kick their feet up. Say thank you for all the sacrifices that you make. Obviously, myself being raised by a single mother, Dave Bautista being raised by a single mother, and then the Natalya essentially being raised by a single mother because Mr. Neidhart was on the road all the time, so she definitely has earned her stripes as a SuperMom.

What drives you to help so many, especially during Covid?

Well, I say time and time again, that the work doesn’t stop just because the world stops at times for certain people. It is when you get into a certain position, I think especially as a leader, and I am deemed as a community hero/community leader, I think that that’s the time that people need to see you even more so doing the work. They need to see you investing in things. Don’t just do things when things are great. They want to see how you’re going to respond, and how are you going to be innovative, and still get the work done and get people engaged. We’re getting the work done even in the midst of a pandemic and so I looked at it as a challenge. I think that most of the people that are in the nonprofit world looked at it as just challenging, and I’m not even going to sugar coat it and say that it was easy, but I can say that we had the highest financial year because people cannot go out and do certain things, but they still want to see work getting done. And so we share a lot of cost in regards to trying to maximize being able to only have X amount of people in one space. And you’ve got several people calling, “Hey, man. I want to volunteer, man. I need to do something. I need to get out of the house.”

Then it’s like trying to physically put them in situations where they can do that. But we did it and we were better for it. We got better as a foundation to be able to navigate through that space and say, “You know what? Hey, any event, we don’t have to go as big with certain things. We can also do this, and we can also spend less money here, and put more money here.” So it was a learning process for me as well because I’m used to just making every[thing big]. I mean, I’m WWE all the way. I want to make it big, and glamorous, and things like that, and then we’ve been able to achieve that. But then when you can’t do that, you’ve got to learn how to do business a different way. And so we went through those hurdles and challenges, but at the end of the day, we didn’t allow a pandemic to stop what we were going to do and what we set out to do.

The last time WWE fans got to see you live was WrestleMania 37, where you got to be the host in front of the first live WWE crowd in over a year. What did that moment mean to you?

Man, it meant the world to me. Your first time in front of live fans, for one. Two, being able to do it on the grandest stage of them all, WrestleMania in my home city of Tampa, and being able to do it essentially, alongside the person that helped put WrestleMania on the map, Hulk Hogan, and he’s from Tampa as well. And so although some of the responses that we got during the show were more so for him, were a little shaky, but at the same token, he powered through it. We had a great show. We made history on multiple levels with matches… [it was the] first time two black women competed in a main event. The first time an African-American went into a WrestleMania stage as a champion and came out as a champion.

We had Bad Bunny, who absolutely killed it with his performance with The Miz, and Damian Priest, and John Morrison. Just our women’s matches, our men’s matches like Apollo Crews, The New Day, Xavier [Woods]. I mean, it’s just everybody that was on the roster on both nights… The Bella twins coming back, and giving fans an opportunity to see two Hall of Famers still get in there and mix it up a little bit with Bayley, and Bayley was phenomenal for both nights. You talk about somebody taking a little bit and making it a lot, she did that and she’s one of the best performers we have in our business. She’s earned every right to do any and everything she wants to do in this business and I look forward to seeing her continue to do great and be great.

You mentioned Sasha & Bianca making history, and we recently learned Bobby Lashley and Kofi Kingston will wrestle for the WWE Championship at Money in the Bank. How do you feel about that match?

Well, considering I got into this business in 2009, and even at the time that I got into it there was still a lot of never been, never done, not familiar faces in the main event scene that looked like mine, you know? Even as a kid, I wouldn’t say it was the main event scene, but the person I saw the most was Junkyard Dog. And now you have serious, intelligent, athletic characters of color, and more so, great human beings that are getting a chance to showcase their athletic skills, but also to be put in a position because they’re great human beings. I look at a match even when Kofi won a championship at WrestleMania, I don’t think that there was one African-American fan or talent that did not have tears in their eyes. I mean, I still get goosebumps thinking about that moment and what it meant for the culture, what it meant for the business in general, what it meant for our company.

And it shows that our company is not just talking about making changes, and setting standards, and breaking barriers. We’re actually doing it and doing it at a level now, I mean, I remember when I first got into wrestling in 2009, women had maybe two, three minutes matches. Now, to your point, headlining WrestleMania, they’ve done it several times now, and then having prominent spots available for people of color. And they’re seizing that opportunity, and being able to not just sing and dance their way into a situation, but actually peak, and show personality, and show what kind of representative they can be for our company.

That in itself is… It’s one of the reasons why I will do my best to be here as long as I possibly can because I have seen so much growth. I’m very, very proud of the changes that have been made that have been for the better. And when you look at some of the things that have been accomplished over the last eight years, seven years, and the growth of our company, the partnerships that we have, it’s all because we’re moving and we’re saying that we want to do something, set a standard for something, inclusion, diversity, and then we’re showing it on television. Some people may not like what we put on television sometimes, and that’s fine. That’s why it’s TV.

You can change it and put on whatever you want, but I will never allow people to mismanage what we do as a company, and how many smiles on faces that we actually put on people’s faces on a weekly basis that you may not like it here in the US, but there are people in South Africa, there are people in Australia, there are people in Japan, there are people in China, there are people in India that absolutely love everything. They eat up every single thing we put on TV. And to be able to see more and more people of color be in positions where they can help our company progress into a forward-thinking, and to free-thinking, and understanding, it’s a great time to be alive in our business, and then through specifically here for WWE.