Some of the solutions listed may work, but this one solved my issue with distutils installed packages.
sudo apt-get remove python-ipython
Depending on what type of package it is, you will need to provide the "python-" for python packages.
Edit:
However, if this still does not solve your question, you might want to consider downgrading pip to an earlier version as pip 10 does not allow removal of distutils packages
sudo -H pip install pip==9.0.1
sudo pip uninstall ipython
Thank you for the comment, as I am looking to improve how I can help people.