Conan O’Brien Recalls The Rock Using His Line At WWE Royal Rumble 2000

Conan O’Brien recalls a former writer getting The Rock to use one of Conan’s lines. 

Conan is known as one of the top minds in comedy through his writing and work on his own show and shows like Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, and more. Conan has worked with plenty of smart people in comedy as well, and when speaking to Howard Stern, Conan said that some of the smartest people he worked with didn’t go to a big college or go to college at all. 

“The most brilliant people I’ve worked with, I don’t know where they went to college, some of them didn’t go to college. One of the greatest comedy writers I’ve ever worked with went straight into the military out of high school. Tommy Blacha, an amazing comedy writer and one of the most original comedy minds I’ve ever met. He was a fascinating guy. Here’s something I love about him. He left our show — some people leave our show to go work for Letterman or they have some amazing opportunity to run a sitcom out in LA. He left our show to go work for the WWF,” recalled Conan. 

Conan continued, recalling a story of Blacha getting a Conan line through to The Rock. 

“This is one of my proudest moments in comedy, I used to screw around with the writers a lot and I would put on the attitude of this larger than life…I’d come into the room and be like, ‘Quiet down you idiots’ and I’d go on these long rants. One of my putdowns that I came up with, it was so stupid but I liked it, if a writer was going on or said something I didn’t like, I’d say, ‘Why don’t you have a nice tall glass of shut up juice. Do yourself a favor.’ It was such a stupid putdown, but Tommy liked it and he said, ‘Watch the match this weekend.’ It was The Rock,” he said before a clip of The Rock using the line during a promo at the 2000 WWE Royal Rumble aired. “The crowd went crazy. The next week, Tommy said, ‘check this out.’ I trun into that match and people are holding up signs that say, ‘Drink some shut up juice.’ Tommy is apologizing, ‘I know I borrowed it from you.’ ‘What are you talking about? Dwayne The Rock Johnson just said it. Vince McMahon gave you a high five.’ I was in heaven.”

Did Conan technically write for The Rock? 

The Rock fed everyone a glass of shut up juice at the 2000 Royal Rumble as he won the Royal Rumble match by last eliminating The Big Show (Paul Wight). 

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