Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
Former ESPN personality Michelle Beadle hates Stephen A. Smith so much, she openly admits “praying” for his downfall. Beadle has a history with Smith, but his shilling for an app called Solitaire Cash was the straw that broke the camel’s back for her.
Earlier this year, Michelle Beadle was stunned to find out that Stephen A. Smith had swiped her SiriusXM radio show time slot. That certainly set her off. However, her beef with Smith goes back even further. It dates back to the Ray Rice incident in 2014.
“I don’t respect him. I don’t respect his work. He doesn’t like me,” Beadle said in an interview this past June. “This goes back to the Ray Rice stuff. He made some really piggish comments on the air. I responded; he got suspended for like two weeks. I think that was sort of the beginning of the end for anything.”
Michelle Beadle really dislikes Stephen A. Smith
This week, on the latest episode of her new show, Beadle and Decker, the former SportsNation co-host blasted Stephen A. Smith once again. In particular, she took aim at “all the shilling that’s going on amongst our colleagues in this business.” Counted among those colleagues are Smith, Mina Kimes, Dan Orlovsky, Laura Rutlidge, and Kendrick Perkins.
“Look, there’s no secret how I feel about that human,” Beadle said. “ESPN pays him a gazillion dollars to get a lot of stuff wrong and yell. He gets caught playing solitaire during the NBA freaking Finals.”
“So instead of like, yeah, he doubles down and he does this,” she continued. “If I’m ESPN, and I get it, you created this monster. He is bigger than you now, and that’s exactly your fault. You let him run rampant all over that company and put his face on every…
“For everybody who’s like, ‘Oh, he works so hard.’ I’m going to let you in on a little behind the scenes. He wants to do that. Nobody’s asking him. He’s desperate to do it. He shows up. I told everyone I work with, I will never share a set with that person ever because I don’t respect him and I don’t,
life’s too short.”
Michelle Beadle says Stephen A. Smith lacks principles
“The minute, literally the minute, the morning of my last day on Get Up, as Greenie [Mike Greenberg] was giving me a heartfelt goodbye and I awkwardly sat there as I was leaving the set, they started a promo that Stephen A. Smith will be on the show tomorrow. Like, it is him. So, let’s stop acting like the guy gets worked to death. It’s him.
“So, that being said, he made you look like fools for handing him a blank check in the first place. He doesn’t even give a s— about the stuff that he’s paid a gazillion dollars to talk about. Now he’s turning around and turning that into a money-making opportunity. Then the money-making opportunity looks like it’s a fraudulent crap business to begin with.
“Honestly, I’m not a religious person, but I pray for the downfall. I really do. It’s gross, man, you gotta have principles in this thing.”
By the way, that solitaire app that all of these ESPN personalities have been promoting? Its parent company Papaya Gaming Company is being sued for allegedly committing fraud through false advertising. They claim the game is “totally fair and skill-based,” but according to the complaint, Papaya used bots “masquerading as human players” in games that affected the outcomes.