Stephen A. Smith claims former ESPN star wanted Molly Qerim’s ‘First Take’ job then realizes he may have been catfished
Champion checked the receipts in real time and left Smith confronting the possibility that someone had impersonated his former ESPN colleague
Stephen A. Smith thought he had caught Cari Champion admitting something she did not want made public. By the time she finished checking her phone, the accusation had turned back on him.
During Smith’s appearance on Flagrant and Funny , the podcast hosted by Champion and Jemele Hill, the ESPN star claimed Champion contacted him after Molly Qerim left First Take and expressed interest in returning to her former seat.
Champion’s reaction was immediate. She denied contacting Smith about the opening and appeared genuinely stunned that he believed the conversation had occurred.
“Where and when?” she demanded as Hill reacted with similar disbelief.
Smith initially stood by his version of events. He recalled receiving a message that he believed came from Champion and repeated what he remembered it saying: “We need to talk. I need to be back in that seat.”
Cari Champion asks Stephen A. Smith for the receipts
Champion began reviewing her messages to Smith from the previous year in real time. She said there was nothing about Qerim, First Take or an attempt to return to ESPN.
The confusion deepened when Smith and Champion acknowledged that both had changed their phone numbers during the previous 12 months. That raised the possibility that Smith had received a message from someone using a number he incorrectly believed belonged to Champion.
Faced with her emphatic denial and the missing message history, Smith finally backed away from the allegation.
“Then it was somebody who pretended to be her,” he conceded.
The exchange did not reveal who allegedly sent the message, how that person obtained Smith’s number or whether Smith still possessed the original text. It also did not independently establish that an impersonator was responsible. What it did establish was that Champion categorically denied requesting Qerim’s position and challenged Smith to produce evidence.
What initially sounded like an inside revelation about ESPN’s most prominent debate show instead became a bizarre possible catfishing story involving two of the network’s most recognizable former colleagues.
