Denzel Washington, the only man that Chad 85 will listen to

It was one of those typically incestuous Tinseltown celebrity convergences, an impromptu conversation between an athlete who changed his name to enhance his fame and an actor who need only drop his first name to receive the red-carpet treatment.

Yet when Cincinnati Bengals wideout Chad Ochocinco met Denzel Washington at a Los Angeles Lakers game this past spring, it wasn’t the mutual fawning session you might expect. Rather than compliment the receiver formerly known as Johnson for his athletic excellence, Washington called him out, portraying Ochocinco’s lost 2008 season as a self-inflicted nightmare.

“He got on me about the way I handled myself last offseason,” Ochocinco recalled in a phone conversation last week. “He wasn’t being gentle. He said, ‘You know what? You need to straighten up and stop fussin’ about something you have no control over. Make it fun again because it sure looks better when you do it that way.’ That’s all I needed to hear, especially from somebody like him.”