Marcellus Wiley: ‘FS1 had to get rid of everything Charlie Dixon touched’

FS1 began its latest lineup overhaul this week, headlined by the exits of Emmanuel Acho and Joy Taylor, and former Fox Sports host Marcellus Wiley doesn’t seem surprised by any of it.

Monday afternoon, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic dropped the bombshell report that FS1 was canceling Craig Carton’s Breakfast Ball, Acho’s The Facility and Taylor’s Speak, leaving a lengthy list of sports talkers wondering what’s next for their careers. The news of this shakeup comes after Taylor was named as a defendant in a lawsuit by a former FS1 hairstylist at the start of this year.

In the lawsuit against Fox Sports, Taylor was accused of having sexual relations with Acho and executive Charlie Dixon, who has since been fired. With Dixon at the helm, the network launched Breakfast Ball, The Facility and the latest installment of Speak last year. And according to Wiley, FS1 sought to cut Dixon’s shows in the wake of the lawsuit against them.

“The lawsuit is the biggest indicator that this had to happen,” Wiley said on his YouTube channel. “If you want to sum up what happened yesterday, Fox, FS1 had to get rid of everything Charlie Dixon touched. And I don’t mean that literally.”

Wiley didn’t attempt to directly confirm or deny the allegations against Joy Taylor and Charlie Dixon, but he believes FS1 saw potential for this story to get bigger. According to Wiley, there are enough receipts available to make this story explode again, citing Joy Taylor’s ex-husband and ex-fiancé who might be willing to address the allegations publicly.

Wiley surmised FS1 said, “Guilty or not…We can’t sit on Charlie, that grenade is gonna blow up on us,” which is why they fired Dixon and started cutting the shows he created.

According to Wiley, if Taylor and Acho were still co-hosting Speak together, as they had between 2022 and 2024, the network may not have had to eliminate as many shows. But with Taylor and Acho on separate shows, the network felt compelled to cut both. Wiley also noted Colin Cowherd and First Things First, which were not named in the lawsuit, are untouchable at FS1 because they’ve been so successful. Breakfast Ball, The Facility and Speak failed to achieve a similar level of success, making them expendable.

Carton, Danny Parkins and Mark Schlereth from Breakfast Ball similarly had no ties to the lawsuit against Fox Sports. But it was a show created by Dixon. And with Dixon now out at the network, Wiley says current executives weren’t fond of the show.

Wiley didn’t predict what’s next for FS1 now that it has a lot of holes to fill in their lineup. But the former FS1 host did predict there is more “bombshell” news around the network to come, likely by football season.