Shannon Sharpe has explained he missed Undisputed on Tuesday to avoid a confrontation with co-host Skip Bayless about his tweet following Damar Hamlin’s collapse.
The Buffalo Bills safety, whose condition is “trending upwards in a positive way” but remains in critical condition in hospital, collapsed during Monday night’s NFL game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Bayless then sparked a furious backlash after questioning whether the NFL should postpone the game after Hamlin was taken off the field and left in a critical condition due to the close proximity to the play-offs.
Sharpe elaborated on his disagreement with Bayless’ tweet in an opening monologue to Wednesday’s Fox Sports 1 show: "There's been a lot of speculation about why I wasn't on here yesterday and I won't get into speculation or conjecture or innuendo.
“But I will say this, watching that game on Monday night, what happened to Damar Hamlin struck me a little different. As a brotherhood in the NFL, when injuries happen, we know injuries are part of the game. I've seen guys suffer ACLs and Achilles tears.
“But I've never seen anybody have to be revived and fight for their life on the field, so it struck me a little differently. I remember seeing my brother paralysed on the field, temporarily, and he was able to regain focus. Skip tweeted something and although I disagreed with the tweet. Hopefully Skip will take it down...”
Bayless then interrupted: “I'm not going to take it down. I stand by what I tweeted.”
The former Denver Broncos star then added: “Let me finish, go ahead. I cannot even get through a monologue without you interrupting.
“I didn't want to yesterday get into a situation when Damar 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 insisted “nobody here had a problem with that tweet,” before Sharpe concluded.
“No. Clearly the bosses wanted you to offer an explanation,” Sharpe said. “So clearly somebody had a problem.”
