Video Shows O.J. Joking About Hitting Wife

O.J. Simpson’s work as a pitchman came back to haunt him Tuesday when jurors watched him joke about punching “the wife” while taping an exercise video, and swear to his good health in a juice drink testimonial.

In the workout video made three weeks before his former wife’s murder, Simpson strayed from the script during out-takes of an air-punching sequence.

“I’m telling ya, you just gotta get your space in if you’re working out with the wife, if ya know what I mean. You could always blame it on, uh, working out,” Simpson quipped.

The impromptu remarks were from the “O.J. Simpson Minimum Maintenance Fitness for Men” video that showed Simpson squatting, lunging, doing push-ups and marching in place.

With jurors showing little reaction, the videotape was played during a devastating prosecution cross-examination of the doctor who saw Simpson twice in the week after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

With the defense portraying Simpson as physically unable to commit the double homicides, Dr. Robert Huizenga had testified the sports legend walked like “Tarzan’s grandfather” because of football injuries and arthritis.

After the videotape was played, prosecutor Brian Kelberg suggested that Simpson had been faking a limp during his medical exam.

Huizenga, who once served as the team doctor for the Los Angeles Raiders, said Simpson’s limp was much less pronounced in the videotape. Untrained observers could not detect it at all.

Jurors then heard Simpson himself claim in a videotaped motivational speech made in late March 1994, three months before the murders, that drinking “Juice Plus” cured his arthritis pain.