Undisputed, a television show that looks to answer the age-old question “is everything Skip Bayless does worth it if it gets people to tune in?” started Wednesday’s episode with an effort to address the elephant in the room: Why did co-host Shannon Sharpe miss Tuesday’s edition of the program? Sharpe attempted to answer this with a monologue about the way the situation involving Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin impacted him, but of course, Bayless’ inability to get out of the way led to an argument breaking out between the two.
Fireworks to start Undisputed over Skip’s tweet pic.twitter.com/CnMBvgUPP3
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“There’s been a lot of speculation of why I wasn’t on the air yesterday, and I won’t get into speculation or conjecture or innuendo,” Sharpe said to lead off the show. “But I will say this: Watching that game on Monday night, what happened to Damar Hamlin struck me a little different. As a brotherhood in the NFL, when injuries happen when we know injuries are a part of the game, I’ve seen guys suffer ACLs and achilles tears, but I’ve never seen anybody have to be revived and fight for their life on the field. So, this struck me a little differently, because I remember seeing my brother paralyzed on the field temporarily, and he was able to regain focus.”
Sharpe then brought up a tweet Bayless sent while Hamlin was down where Bayless focused on the stakes of Monday night’s game between the Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals over Hamlin’s well-being, which led to the longtime talking head coming under waves of criticism. After Sharpe said “I disagreed with the tweet and hopefully Skip will take it down,” Bayless interjected, which Sharpe very much did not appreciate.
“Time out, time out, I’m not gonna take it down, ’cause I stand by what I tweeted,” Bayless said.
Sharpe asked if he could finish before deciding it was no longer worth continuing after being interrupted.
“I cannot even get through a monologue without you interrupting me,” Sharpe said. Bayless then attempted to play the victim by saying he did not know Sharpe was going to bring this up before the Hall of Fame inductee continued speaking.
“I was just gonna say, Skip, I didn’t want, yesterday, to get into a situation where Damar Hamlin was the issue,” Sharpe said. “We should’ve been talking about him and not getting into your tweet. That’s what I was gonna do. But you can’t even let me finish my opening monologue without you interrupting.”
Bayless, once again, said he was “under the impression” that the tweet wasn’t going to get brought up, “because nobody here had a problem with that tweet.”
“No,” Sharpe said. “Clearly the bosses wanted you to offer an explanation, so clearly…”
There was one final, brief back-and-forth before Sharpe realized this was a lost cause and asked for the show to begin.