By 
Ron Artest on Dancing With The Stars Rumors: “They asked me to, but I just don’t feel comfortable wearing leotards and lingerie.”
It’s always a treat to tune in to what Ron Artest has to say. Throw in a lockout and some Dancing With The Stars rumors and things can get real interesting. The mercurial forward addresses those DWTS rumors, why he wants to head to England to play during the lockout, what’s up with his attempt to change his name and whatever happened to his interest in trying out for an NFL team. You can’t make this stuff up. (Editor’s note: This interview obviously took place before the DWTS announcement. And since he is now officially a contestant on DWTS, we also know that Artest is a tremendous liar.)Artest joined ESPN Radio Los Angeles to talk about how outstanding parking tickets have kept him from being able to change his name, why he doesn’t have a paid assistant to take care of those kinds of things for him, what the original idea behind the name change was, why he’s interested in playing overseas in England during the lockout, his hopes to act while abroad in England, the rumors of him being on Dancing With The Stars, why the outfits make him not interested in participating, what happened to his plans to try out for an NFL team, and who he’d like to fight in the boxing world.
On what’s new with him and why the hosts can’t greet him by ‘Metta World Peace’:
“I mean, when you don’t pay parking tickets, you don’t get to change your name. Actually when I was in college, they didn’t teach me how to pay parking tickets. I didn’t take the class; I blame that on my professors.”
On how many outstanding parking tickets he has:
“I think I had about three parking tickets. Sometimes you just put your car on the wrong side of the street, and you just forget to move your car in the morning.”
Does someone who makes as much money as him not have assistants to handle things like that?
“The only people I know that hired people to do something was Eddie Murphy in Coming to America when he had that girl wash his…. (link to NSFW short video clip). Everybody doesn’t have that luxury to hire people to do things.”
Why the impetus and the source of the inspiration for the name change in the first place?
“I just think… I do have fans around the world, and obviously we know we’re not in a good state, we’re not in a perfect state right now, so I just try to continue to promote to the youth — especially my fans — the importance of getting along; it’s important to stay on top of your education and things like that.”
On what his ambitions and hopes are in terms of potentially going overseas during a locked out 2011-2012 NBA season:
“The ambition is definitely to take things overseas, but you know, I could have went to another country that would have paid more, but I wanted to start something new, I always like to do things a little bit different, so the league I was going to was actually the worst one in Europe. But the UK is a great nation and there’s a lot of potential out there. They have money and experience and everything like that, but basketball is not big. So I’m trying to bring basketball to the UK. So that was my whole thinking of going to the UK.”
Does he already have acting gigs lined up when he moves out there or this the acting thing just something he hopes might materialize:
“Yeah I actually had two sitcoms that I was supposed to work on when I got out there, but I didn’t get a chance to go because I had some other things to do back home. So I’m going to go probably after Thanksgiving, I’m going to go for a few weeks.”
On the rumors of him being on next season of Dancing With The Stars:
“They asked me to, but I just don’t feel comfortable wearing leotards and lingerie.”
Seems like he’d be the type of guy who would feel comfortable wearing those kinds of outfits and performing:
“I mean like Prince; I don’t want to look like Prince though.”
So can he not dance?
“I’m just saying I like Prince but I don’t want to wear the same clothes as him.”
On whatever happened to his plans to try to make an NFL team:
“T.O. was helping me out a lot, so I’ve got to give a shout out to Terrell Owens. But then I called his agent Drew [Rosenhaus], he said he was going to call me back and then he never called me back. I was waiting for Drew to call back, and then I turn around and they were playing football already, and then I didn’t have any other contacts. So Drew was supposed to call me back — I wanted to at least try out — and then Drew didn’t even call me back.”
If he’d been training since he was a young kid, he’d certainly have a chance at being the Heavyweight Champion of the World, no?
“I want to fight [Wladimir] Klitschko.”
Comments