Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe ‘devastated’ Fox forced them apart

It wasn’t arguments over Tom Brady or Damar Hamlin that led Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe to split; it was Fox.

More than three years after Bayless and Sharpe parted ways with each other, the former FS1 partners reunited for an episode of Club Shay Shay. And while they’ve both spoken about their divorce separately, this was the first time they detailed it together.

Sharpe’s exit was reported and confirmed several weeks before he ultimately left Undisputed, giving him a bit of a farewell before his final show. But Bayless said it wasn’t until they were down to Sharpe’s final days when he finally learned his partner of seven years didn’t actually want to leave Undisputed or Fox Sports. Not only did Sharpe not want to leave, but he would have been willing to revitalize the show with Bayless, despite having already announced his looming departure.

“They didn’t give me much of a choice in the matter,” Sharpe insisted of Fox. “And this is something I’ve never shared. They said, ‘This is over.’ They said it was over. I’m not gonna argue with you and fight with you. If you don’t think I’m good enough to do the job, okay.”

After learning that Sharpe was interested in continuing with Undisputed for another year, Bayless responded, saying there’s still time to save the show and their partnership, signaling to executives that they wanted to continue working together.

“I went upstairs and relayed this one last time, ‘Just let this be.’ Because we each had about one year left on our deals. And I was pretty sure a year from that day, I wanted to try something else,” Bayless admitted. “We had such a great run that I told them, just let this go. It’s cool, we’re cool, we’re fine. And I had to go back down to your dressing room the day before you left to say I got cold blank stares. I got, ‘No way in hell are we going forward with this show.’ And it was devastating to me.”

Sharpe noted the only thing he asked Fox for was his podcast. If they had given him his podcast, he would have been willing to stay on at Fox and Undisputed for one or more years without a salary increase. Because Sharpe knew he could grow Club Shay Shay more without Fox policing which guests they would allow on the show.

“Just let me have the podcast. They said let us think about it,” Sharpe recalls of his final attempt at reaching a deal with Fox. “I’m going to my attorney’s office. When I get there, there’s a fax already coming through: my termination.”

“You got the last laugh out of that,” Bayless told Sharpe.

For years, there was an assumption that it was Bayless telling Sharpe “Put your glasses back on” during a heated debate about Tom Brady that started their downfall. And it was Bayless’s untimely tweet as Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest that ultimately cemented their breakup. But it sounds like Fox may have been bothered by those tense show moments more than Bayless and Sharpe were.