Fireworks erupted on Wednesday when NFL Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe lit into his FS1 co-host Skip Bayless over a universally condemned tweet regarding Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who is currently fighting for his life after suffering cardiac arrest on-field.
Bayless, the trollish sports pundit known for his controversial hot takes, sparked intense backlash when he questioned how the NFL could possibly postpone Monday night’s game between the Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals after Hamlin collapsed. Medics had to administer CPR at the stadium and the 24-year-old player needed to be resuscitated twice.
“[N]o doubt the NFL is considering postponing the rest of this game - but how? This late in the season, a game of this magnitude is crucial to the regular-season outcome … which suddenly seems so irrelevant,” Bayless tweeted shortly after the game was suspended, prompting immediate and widespread outrage.
ADVERTISEMENT
With countless current and former athletes blasting Bayless and even calling for Fox Sports to fire him, the provocative host somewhat apologized in a follow-up tweet. “Nothing is more important than that young man’s health,” he wrote. “That was the point of my last tweet. I’m sorry if that was misunderstood but his health is all that matters.”
On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Sports debate show Undisputed, Bayless devoted a lengthy and emotional monologue to the Hamlin injury—without directly addressing the controversial tweet. Saying he was “still wrecked” over Hamlin’s injury, Bayless added that “we wrestled” over “whether to even do a show today because… we almost can’t win with this because the last thing we want to do is come off as insensitive.”
Sharpe, who has seemingly grown more contentious with Bayless in recent weeks, notably did not appear on Tuesday’s program. According to TMZ, Sharpe no-showed because he was upset over his colleague’s tweet and it was unclear whether he would return this week.
But Sharpe did return to Undisputed on Wednesday morning—and it was uncomfortably tense right from the start.
“There’s been a lot of speculation about why I wasn’t on air yesterday and I won’t get into speculation, conjecture, innuendo, but I will say this,” Sharpe began. “In watching that game Monday night, what happened to Damar Hamlin struck me a little different.”
The Denver Broncos great continued: “As a brotherhood in the NFL, when injuries happen, we know injuries are part of the game. I’ve seen guys suffer ACLs, an Achilles tear, but I’ve never seen anybody revived or have to fight for their life on the field. So it struck me a little differently because I remembered seeing my brother [Sterling Sharpe] paralyzed on the field temporarily, and he was able to regain focus.”
At that point, Sharpe noted that Bayless had “tweeted something” that he “disagreed with,” adding that he hoped his co-host “would take it down.” Bayless, calling for a “timeout,” said that he’s “not going to take it down” since he stands by the tweet.
Incensed over the interruption, Sharpe asked Bayless to “let me finish” before expressing his frustration with his colleague’s sensitivity over his social-media post.
“I mean I can not even get through a monologue without you interrupting me,” the football star exclaimed as Bayless tried to interject. “I was just going to say, Skip, I didn’t want yesterday to have been a situation where Damar Hamlin was the issue—we should have been talking about him and not getting into your tweet. That’s what I was going to do, but you can’t even let me finish my opening monologue without you interrupting!”
Throwing his hands in the air, Bayless asserted that he was “under the impression you weren’t going to bring this up because nobody here had a problem with that tweet.” Sharpe, however, suggested that wasn’t entirely the case.
“No! Clearly the bosses wanted you to offer an explanation, so clearly somebody had a problem,” he contended.
“No, they did not have—nobody,“ Bayless stammered in response.
“Let’s go ahead, Jen,” Sharpe snapped back, addressing co-host Jen Hale.
And with that, the hosts moved on from Hamlin to jump right into yet another debate over LeBron James.
