Skip Bayless defends refusing to take down Damar Hamlin tweet in angry clash with own co-host

Former NFL player Shannon Sharpe returned to his Fox Sports talk show and berated co-host Skip Bayless when he refused to take down his widely criticised Damar Hamlin tweet.

Sharpe did not show up for Tuesday’s Undisputed show following Hamlin’s collapse during the Monday night game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals.

Bayless, a sports pundit known for trolling athletes and giving outrageous takes, was widely criticised for a tweet he made after Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest.

“[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 after the game was suspended.

Sharpe told Bayless that he would not elaborate on why he had missed the show, despite reports it was because he was upset with his co-host.

He did say that as a former player that “what happened to Damar Hamlin struck me a little different.”

Then he went on the attack and noted that Bayless had “tweeted something” that he “disagreed with”  and that he hoped he would take the tweet down.

Bayless called for a “timeout” and told Sharpe that he was “not going to take it down” as he stands by it.

An exasperated Sharpe then told Bayless how frustrated he had become over the tweet.

“I mean I can not even get through a monologue without you interrupting me,” Sharpe said over interruptions from Bayless. “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”

Bayless then told his co-host that he was “under the impression you weren’t going to bring this up because nobody here had a problem with that tweet.”

Sharpe responded that someone at the show had a problem with what Bayless had done.

“Clearly the bosses wanted you to offer an explanation, so clearly somebody had a problem,” he said as Bayless replied, “No, they did not have—nobody.”