It was popular. SNL did a hilarious bit that was a mishmash of Cannon and a drug commercial. You can guess what happened to the back of Cannon’s pants as he was running after a criminal, gun drawn, and the voiceover intoned “oily discharge”. Of course other horrible side effects affected poor Cannon, too. Ah, back when SNL was still funny.
There were lots of jokes about such a fat guy could keep running and running after bad guys without collapsing or having a heart attack back then, too.
fat guy stunt double
I think maybe Sonny and Cher did a parody of it on their show too?