This isn’t the first time a trip overseas has inspired Shaquille O’Neal to threaten Charles Barkley with violence he’d never actually deliver back home. On a previous international stop, O’Neal joked that Barkley had “American defense immunity,” meaning he could only make good on his threats once they were both outside the country. This week, on a new trip abroad, O’Neal revived the bit, and this time with a seven-year-old grudge as the excuse.

O’Neal is currently in Lithuania as the newly announced ambassador for NordVPN, a company reportedly valued at roughly $3 billion. He used a sit-down interview to settle an old score. Asked about Barkley’s years-old jab that O’Neal has “no shame” and will promote “absolutely everything and anything,” O’Neal didn’t hold back.

“Well, NordVPN is not anything. They’re at the top of the line, what they do. World-class company, as you can see,” he said. “And this is why I hate Charles Barkley, because he talks too much. If Charles was here right now, I’d punch him in the face.”

The comment O’Neal was responding to originated in 2019. Barkley mocked O’Neal’s willingness to endorse nearly any product during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” That jab has apparently stuck with O’Neal well past its original airing, resurfacing now specifically because NordVPN’s ambassadorship gave him a fresh product to defend.

What made O’Neal’s “punch him in the face” threats to be seen as comedy rather than genuine hostility is the well-documented, decades-long relationship underneath them. The two actually did come to blows once, during a 1999 on-court altercation when O’Neal shoved Barkley and Barkley retaliated by throwing the ball at him, an incident O’Neal has said was only resolved after both of their mothers called to demand they stop.

Since then, Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley have built one of television’s most recognizable double acts on “Inside the NBA.” They’ve traded similar threats regularly and openly – O’Neal has previously offered to “knock him out on sight” during a discussion of the Will Smith Oscars slap, and once jokingly offered to punch Barkley for a fee from Draymond Green live on air.

Despite the constant bickering, O’Neal has been careful to note the sincerity underneath it. He once said of Barkley: “Despite how much we bicker on TV, there is no denying that we respect each other to a high degree.”

O’Neal is in Lithuania as part of his NordVPN partnership. He is also attending Zalgiris Kaunas’s EuroLeague opener against Olympiacos, given Zalgiris’s partial ownership ties to Tesonet, the company co-founded by NordVPN’s own co-founder.

O’Neal, who also serves as president of Reebok Basketball, has increasingly built out a business portfolio spanning endorsements, ownership stakes and executive roles well beyond his broadcasting career.