After years of taking hits from Stephen A. Smith, Max Kellerman finally fired back, and Michelle Beadle was excited to see it.<\/p>\n
Since their break-up on First Take, Smith has been very open about being the one who decided Kellerman was no longer fit for the show. Probably too open, with Smith taking unnecessary shots<\/a> at Kellerman every time he gets asked about their relationship, even blaming his former First Take partner for what he believed was a lack of chemistry<\/a> on the show. And for years, Kellerman quietly absorbed jab after jab, until this week, when Kellerman joined The Bill Simmons Podcast and finally responded.<\/p>\n While Smith claimed he and Kellerman lacked chemistry, Kellerman claimed one reason for their divorce was that ESPN\u2019s $100 million talent couldn\u2019t handle debating him<\/a> on a regular basis.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re doing a debate show and you\u2019re a competitive person, why would you want me as a partner?\u201d Kellerman asked Simmons. \u201cThat\u2019s bad. You want to go 15 rounds every day with \u2018Muhammad Kellerman?\u2019 That\u2019s just bad. It\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n And to that, Michelle Beadle basically said, \u2018finally.\u2019<\/p>\n \ufeff Co-host Cody Decker noted Kellerman is pretty smart, adding, \u201cYou know who isn\u2019t smart? I\u2019m not going to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to,\u201d Beadle interjected. \u201cPeople know what\u2019s up.\u201d<\/p>\n And the people who know what\u2019s up know they were both referring to Stephen A. Smith. As much as Beadle respects Kellerman from their time working on SportsNation together, she loathes Stephen A. Smith even more.<\/p>\n During an appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast two years ago, Beadle was critical of Smith<\/a> for fostering a very one-sided feud with Kellerman. Beadle took the side of believing her former co-host may have been too intelligent an opponent for Smith to handle on a debate show, a sentiment Kellerman appeared to echo this week.<\/p>\n Beadle\u2019s dislike of Smith was amplified last summer<\/a> when the First Take host replaced her and Decker on SiriusXM\u2019s Mad Dog Sports Radio. And she hasn\u2019t passed up many opportunities<\/a> to criticize Smith since. \u00a0Kellerman, however, waited four years to pick his spot, and, like many who had been listening to Smith repeatedly criticize him, Beadle was happy to finally hear a rebuttal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years of taking hits from Stephen A. Smith, Max Kellerman finally fired back, and Michelle Beadle was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[167948,97420,167949,148539,349,99,3692],"class_list":["post-331576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-beadle-and-decker","tag-first-take","tag-max-kellerman","tag-michelle-beadle","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-stephen-a-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u201cI\u2019d like to shout out Max Kellerman,\u201d she said to close Wednesday\u2019s episode of Beadle and Decker. \u201cWe\u2019ve been waiting for you to start talking, friend. We\u2019ve been waiting on this day for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n