Stephen A. Smith Gets A Little Weird While Praising Martha Stewart Landing SI Swimsuit Cover At 81

Stephen A. Smith

Getty Image / Allen Berezovsky


The annual SI: Swimsuit covers and models were officially announced this week.

In total, there are 28 models and celebrities featured in the SI: Swimsuit pages this year and 4 of those models have each received their own cover. The cover models include Megan Fox, Kim Petras, Brooks Nader, and 81-year-old Martha Stewart.

Martha Stewart is the only octogenarian in the 2023 SI Swimsuit photos but Elon Musk’s mom at 75-years-old isn’t too far behind.

On his Know Mercy podcast, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith got amped up while praising Martha Stewart’s swimsuit cover. His segment can be found on YouTube and cut down shorter for Twitter:

To be clear, I’m not at all saying it is creepy that Martha Stewart is on the cover and/or Stephen A. Smith is creepy for getting excited about it. I’m merely saying the manner of his praise is a bit creepy and weird.

The reactions to Stephen A. Smith’s comments were swift. There were lots of ‘bonk’ mentions and tweets like these:

Martha Stewart Makes The SI Swimsuit Cover At 81

The SI Swimsuit channel released behind-the-scenes footage of Martha’s cover shoot:

Stephen A. Smith knows what he’s doing talking about Martha and Kim Kardashian. He’s driving interest to his podcast.

But it still comes off as a little weird the way he’s going about it. He could’ve just said ‘congratulations, she looks great’ and moved on. Instead he chose to point out which specific cover models he prefers…