Stephen A. Smith revealed he and Skip Bayless rarely speak anymore, claiming they have not reached out to one another since the First Take personality contacted his former colleague over his "flagrantly wrong" treatment of Shannon Sharpe.
In his appearance on the first episode of Cris Carter's Fully Loaded podcast, Smith established he would never wish anything negative upon Bayless or "speak against him." Still, he's fully aware that everything changed between them after he made certain remarks on J.J. Redick's The Old Man and the Three podcast in 2022.
"We’ve only spoken once over the last year, a year and a half or so," Smith said at the 32:29 mark. "We don't speak much anymore. He got upset over something he thought I said to J.J. Redick and he went on his podcast and attacked me for about 45 minutes. And then I flew to California and approached him face-to-face and we resolved that issue."
Bayless took issue with Stephen A. saying he took the job at First Take after being approached in the parking lot on ESPN's Bristol campus by Skip, who told him he had already "done all that I could to take [the show] as far as it can go" and needed him.
Skip called Smith's account "recklessly inaccurate” and a “shocking fabrication."
"I thought, 'How could my brother Stephen A. turn on me like that?' On me? Seriously?," he said at the time. "Stephen A. was suggesting that he saved and then made First Take. How can you save and make a show that was already as big a billion-to-one success story as ESPN had ever seen? The ratings and the revenues were impossibly great when Stephen A. joined me in 2012."
Stephen A. said the last time he reached out to Skip occurred after his infamous confrontation with Sharpe on Undisputed where Bayless discredited the NFL Hall of Famer's illustrious resume while defending Tom Brady. Shannon later admitted on Stephen A.'s podcast that "it took a lot for me to not put my hands on him" over that moment.
Sharpe added, "Whatever the relationship is, once one partner has no respect for the other, the other partner then in turn loses respect for said partner, then I think it is only a matter of time because I felt in that moment he had lost all respect for me."
Stephen A. claimed on the Fully Loaded podcast that he reached out to Bayless after the dispute with Sharpe, but never heard back.
"I thought he was wrong about Shannon," Smith said. "I thought what he did to Shannon was flagrantly wrong. And I called him, and he never reached back out. So, I stopped reaching out."