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Well, folks, it’s been two years to the day since the guy who DEFINITELY didn’t kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman passed away.<\/p>\n
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April 10, 2024. The day we “lost” Orenthal James Simpson.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n While The Juice may no longer be loose on the streets of L.A. (and not just because he was scared he would run into the REAL killer), we can look back on what some would call his greatest achievement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n No, I’m not talking about rushing for 2,000 yards or winning the Heisman. I am, of course, referring to the time OJ Simpson inadvertently inspired the birth of one of the greatest radio shows of all time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For those of you that are unfamiliar with “The Opie and Anthony Show,” my condolences.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I didn’t discover it until long after it had gone off the air, but thanks to my good buddy and fellow OutKick writer, Matt Reigle<\/a>, I was introduced to O&A in college.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you need a quick summation of the show in its prime, here you go.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don’t expect you to sit through that entire compilation (and that’s one of the shorter ones), but in a nutshell, the show was basically at the forefront of the shock-jock radio movement of the late ’90s and 2000s.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was basically Howard Stern and O&A, then everyone else.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They were kicked off the air multiple times for performing crude and outlandish pranks (including recording a couple having sex at St. Patrick’s Cathedral<\/a>) and basically pushed the limits constantly of what was allowed and not allowed on radio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gregg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia were a force to be reckoned with for nearly two decades, but underlying tensions between the two meant the show was almost preordained to blow up at some point.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Cumia posted a “racially charged”<\/a> rant on Twitter in July 2014 after being attacked by a black woman in Central Park, he was fired, and the show limped on as Opie with Jim Norton (O&A’s third mic) for a few years, until they, too, disbanded over tensions between the two (noticing a pattern here?).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But where does OJ fit into all of this?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, as it turns out, after Simpson CLEARLY didn’t murder his ex-wife and a waiter in June 1994, the former Buffalo Bills legend was set to stand trial for his alleged crimes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was being branded as “The Trial of the Century,”<\/a> and everyone had a take or opinion on it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Everyone, including a 30-something tin knocker named Anthony Cumia, who was living on Long Island at the time and dreaming of doing anything but working on hot roofs in the summer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Opie was a nighttime disc jockey on WBAB, a Long Island radio station.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His show was running a parody song contest, and whoever had the best song parody about OJ’s upcoming trial would be invited to the studio to play it live on the air.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cumia and his brother had a band that would play nights and weekends on the Long Island bar circuit, so the aspiring star saw this as his opportunity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The song’s title? “Gonna Electric Shock OJ,” set to the tune of “(Sittin\u2019 On) The Dock of the Bay,” by Otis Redding.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brilliant.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hughes thought so too, and he kept bringing Cumia back on his show.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The two formed almost immediate chemistry \u2014 ironic, given how their relationship would devolve over the years \u2014 and soon, the pair were being offered radio show contracts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And the rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Opie and Anthony became the most recognizable names on terrestrial radio throughout the 90s, even rivaling the likes of Stern, and part of that had to do with their aforementioned controversies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There was the time they told their audience that Boston mayor Thomas Menino was killed in a limo crash in Florida as part of an April Fools’ prank.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They were fired.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Or the time they gave a homeless guy a microphone, and he proceeded to do what most homeless people would do in that situation: act like a lunatic while saying he was going to force himself onto political figures like Condoleeza Rice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They were suspended.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The show was so popular, it didn’t matter what they did to get themselves in hot water; they always seemed to come back stronger than ever before.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n O&A was even responsible for giving some of the biggest comedians of the time a career boost.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to see guys like Louis CK, Patrice O’Neal, Bill Burr, or Dave Attell chopping it up in the studio with the guys.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They appealed to everyday dudes \u2014 a lost art in entertainment these days \u2014 and they were authentically themselves.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, O&A was such a volatile chemical cocktail, it was inevitable that the whole thing had to end horribly at some point.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the aftermath of his firing, Cumia started a successful media company, Compound Media, and still does radio to this day on WABC in New York.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Opie has a YouTube channel but, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be able to capture the magic of the O&A days.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The two haven’t been on speaking terms for years, and as both have revealed in the past, neither one has considered the other a friend since the turn of the millennium.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Regardless, their legacy is secure among the pantheon of radio shows in history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “The Opie and Anthony Show” was a cultural phenomenon, and people (such as myself) are still discovering the show long after its glorious run came to an end.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And, of course, we have one man to thank for all of that:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Orenthal James Simpson.<\/p>\n <\/div>\nREAD: Wild O.J. Simpson Interview Story Features Porn Claim, Murder Question<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n