Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but four-time NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal's long-awaited revenge on former pop music sensation Aaron Carter has become red-hot on the internet.
A video shot by TruTV network of O'Neal going one-on-one with Carter, the brother of former Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter, in a pickup basketball game, has drawn more than 2.6 million hits since it was posted last week.
The video is based off of Carter's 2000 video "That's How I Beat Shaq" where Carter reminisced, via rap, about beating Shaq, a 15-time NBA All-Star, two-time NBA scoring champion and the 2000 NBA MVP, in a backyard basketball game.
The skit of the "rematch" 12 years later shows O'Neal dying for payback, saying no loss in his career--not even the two NBA Finals losses he suffered in 1995 against the Houston Rockets or in 2004 against the underdog Detroit Pistons--was as painful as his loss to Carter.
"Twelve years later, that loss still hurts. And now, there's only one thing left to do--rematch," O'Neal tells the camera, before Carter walks in, talking a little trash to "old man" Shaq.
What happens next was just a dominating performance where Shaq, now 41, dunks, slams, hits some 20-footers, blocks and crushes Carter,25, in a show of superiority that showed that there was a little "Diesel" still left in O'Neal's tank.
"Whoa, Shaq!" Carter pleads at the end of the video segment. "When I beat you in my music video, it was only a joke."
O'Neal's response? "Oh, okay, I get it. Good one!" he smiles before giving Carter the stink-eye.
Revenge is sweet, but the former NBA icon is hoping the ratings for his new reality show on Tru TV will be even sweeter.
O'Neal is co-starring in a new series called "Upload with Shaquille O'Neal" with comedians Gary Owen and Godfrey in a new half-hour series where the three co-hosts show, spoof and evaluate some of the wildest and weirdest clips they find online. Other comedy guests slated to appear on the show this season will include Loni Love, Ali Wong, Arnez J, Aries Spears, Eliza Skinner, Baron Vaughn and Michelle Buteau.