A.J. Benza Dropped from Howard Stern

After his short-lived talk show, "A.J. After Hours," was unceremoniously cancelled by the E! network, A.J. Benza made the mistake of heading to the Howard Stern show, where he's appeared frequently in the past. A.J. should have known going in that he was going to be hammered by Stern and his cronies about the disaster that was "A.J. After Hours" and Benza actually tolerated a few rounds on the hot seat as callers and Stern himself poked fun at the show's failure.

"You're like Yoko," Stern joked sarcastically. "You're ahead of your time." Following a call in which the listener claimed that Benza's show had cured his insomnia, Benza finally came unglued. He accused Stuttering John Melendez of screening callers so that only the most offensive listeners would get through and actually threatened Stern's stuttering sidekick on the air. At one point, Benza raged, "I'm gonna grab Stuttering John by the neck and punch him in his face!" This only served to inspire Melendez, who then posed as a caller and lambasted Benza and his show, going so far as to refer to Benza's baldness. Stuttering John claimed that A.J.'s hair was so embarrassed that it left his head.

After a few moments, the tension seemed to ease, but Benza didn't back down from his threat to physically beat Melendez and confronted him unexpectedly in the hallway of the studio during a break. A.J. attacked Melendez, slapped him in the face and then scrapped briefly with Gary Dell'Abate, who was attempting to separate the two men. Needless to say, Benza was asked to leave the building at that point by K-Rock general manager Tom Chiusano, and the incident ended. As expected, Howard has parlayed the mishap into a slew of new material for his already outrageous and wildly successful radio show.