Sport
Joe Vesey-Byrne
Aug 10, 2016
The 'oily Tongan man' who has a name by the way (Pita Taufatofua) was given a chest massage on NBC on Tuesday.... and, yes, it was a bit weird.
During the Parade of Nations at the Rio 2016 opening ceremony, the flag bearer for the Pacific nation drew the attention of the crowd, both in the MaracanĂ£ stadium and around the world.
Never meet your heroes, as they say. Also, never meet your oily crush and rub oil on him for a global television network.
NBC's Today Show clearly weren't aware of this latter nugget of wisdom. They invited Taufatofua, the Olympic taekwondo athlete onto the popular morning show for an interview.
They then rubbed oil on him while he spoke.
Speaking on the Today Show Taufatofua said:
It was crazy, it was 20 years worth of work to get me there, but it was sort of surreal. It's hard to describe. It was a crazy, crazy feeling.
As he tried to talk about those years of training he'd put in to reaching the Olympics, as the first ever athlete to represent Tonga in taekwondo, the hosts rubbed his chest with oil.
Below is a video of the interview on the Today Show. Watch as three presenters suddenly appear, sidling up to Taufatofua as his interviewer says:
We have some oil for the ladies to put on you… Pita while they’re oiling you down; you’ve had a lot of injuries, a lot of stuff’s happened, just getting here...
Pita tried to talk about the six broken bones and three torn ligaments he'd endured on his 20-year journey to the Olympics, but cheers and catcalls interrupted him.
The interviewer closed the segment by saying:
There are children watching.
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