Cris Carter Says He Once Threatened To Punch Skip Bayless in the Face

Cris Carter claims that he once threatened to physically assault sports journalist Skip Bayless during a commercial break after being dissed by the FS1 Undisputed host live on television.

Carter, an NFL Hall of Fame inductee regarded as one of the greatest wide receivers of all time, recently appeared on the Fully Loaded podcast and spoke on his checkered history with Bayless.

The former Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings standout, who worked with Bayless at ESPN, admits that he never had a close relationship with Skip and was not fond of the esteemed, yet polarizing sports pundit.

“A number of years ago, I was on a show with Stephen A. [Smith] and Skip Bayless,” Carter said, as covered by Awful Announcing. “I was working at ESPN, doing NFL. I would do Mike Greenberg after doing my NFL stuff, and then I would come on there because Stephen A. and I were friends. I didn’t know Skip personally, and I’m gonna be honest with you: Skip Bayless was not one of my favorite people.

According to Carter, one particular situation between the former colleagues got so tense that he threatened to put hands on Bayless due to the talking head attempting to diminish his career achievements, particularly his lack of Super Bowl rings.

“So, I’m on there doing the show. I do the show and everything. All of a sudden — this is when the [Tim] Tebow phenomenon was going on, and he was a huge Tim Tebow guy,” Carter recalls.

“So I come on there on a Monday, and we’re trading barbs and everything. We go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then I just level said it and was like, ‘Listen, if throwing the football is important in the NFL, Tim Tebow will never be a starting quarterback.’ So, he got defensive and then he came back and said, ‘Well, that’s why you didn’t win a Super Bowl,’ which got nothing to do with nothing.”

Visibly incensed, Carter says he confronted Bayless during the subsequent commercial break, vowing to never work with him again and to strike Bayless in the face if he were to ever address him in that manner. “I told him, ‘I’ll never be on your show again, and if you ever say anything like that to me again, I’ll punch you right in the f**king face,’” the former All-Pro player added.

Bayless, whose pending departure from Undisputed shook up the sports talk world upon being announced in July, has since denied Carter’s recollection of those events, insisting that Carter never threatened to assault him.

“Cris and I sparred often on ‘First Take’ during the Tebow run in 2011 but I have zero memory of him telling me he was going to punch me in the face,” the 72-year-old said in a statement to the New York Post.

“I do remember him giving me advice during a commercial break at midseason: ‘Trust me, you chose the wrong horse,’” Bayless added. “I just shrugged and said: ‘We’ll see.’ All Tebow did was lift a 1-4 team to a division championship and a playoff win over Ben Roethlisberger’s Steelers, with his arm and his legs and his physicality and his playmaking will.”

See Cris Carter speak on Skip Bayless below.

Source: Awful Announcing, New York Post