"To try to poo-poo my career...that was disheartening" - Shannon Sharpe straight-out blames Skip Bayless for quitting Undisputed

NFL legend Shannon Sharpe has been in the sports media business since 2004 when he joined the show "The NFL Today," and has expanded his influence ever since. Recently, he was a guest on Stephen A. Smith's "The Stephen A. Smith Show" and opened up on how Skip Bayless was the reason for which he quit "Undisputed."

Sharpe spent seven years being the co-host of Bayless on FS1's "Undisputed." However, this year, he left the company and the show. Eventually, he signed with ESPN to be Smith's new co-host on First Take.

Shannon got real about what led him to quit from Undisputed. He talks about it at around the 29:57 minute mark of the video.

"I knew at that moment in time it was only a matter of time, that we were going to have to separate." Sharpe said. "I knew that, I knew that. I was willing to play out the contract, but I knew it was going to end.

"Because it started to come with greater and greater regularity, the disrespect. You can say I'm loud, you can say I'm obnoxious, you can say I'm arrogant. But to try to poo-poo my career, a seventh rounder that started out on special teams and played so well that I got into the Hall of Fame. To try to minimize that was very disheartening for me."

Sharpe continued:

"And I didn't think, look, someone that I don't know discredited my career, I'm cool with that. I can live with that. But someone that I considered a friend, or maybe, or we were friendly, but I considered Skip a friend. For you to take that kind of personal shot at me, it really hurt me, it really did."

Sharpe talked about how he argued with Bayless in 2022, when the latter compared the former tight end to Tom Brady. The two had an intense, and somewhat personal, argument.

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Shannon Sharpe didn't name Skip Bayless as he gave a shout out to FS1's staff

Shannon Sharpe has been appreciative of the work that he's done with Bayless and FS. During the aforementioned episode with Smith, he named the staff who helped him in his time with Undisputed. He mentioned Joy Taylor, who started out with the show, and even included the stage managers.

However, after a long list of people, Smith noticed that he didn't mention Bayless even once while giving a shout-out to the people at FS1. Sharpe started to mention names at the 11:40 minute mark.