Charles Barkley vs Skip Bayless received national attention this week, and the latter said his wife is loving the recent reaction that put her at the center of the 15-year-long feud.
“She will defend me to the death, with all of her heart and all of her soul and all of her might,” Bayless said, adding that his wife has offered to fight Barkley over the media feud. “She’s about a third of Charles, she’s strong, she’s in great shape, but she’s about a third.”
Barkley has occasionally taken their feud beyond personal insults, claiming he’d like to “kill” Bayless, an empty threat that few sports fans or media members would have taken seriously. But during last week’s Skip Bayless Show, the Fox Sports host offered a behind the scenes look at the effect Barkley’s casual threats had on his family throughout the years.
Bayless acknowledged his wife Ernestine fears the threats might inspire “some nut” to end her husband’s life. On this week’s Skip Bayless Show, the Fox Sports host said the media reaction to Ernestine’s fear “astounded” him and his wife.
“My wife Ernestine loved this,” Bayless said. “As she watched it take off, she finally got a measure of satisfaction that her side of this was finally hitting the national news cycle.”
According to Bayless, his wife believed the national coverage would force Barkley to apologize for his casual threats.
“Don’t count on this,” Bayless told Ernestine. “Don’t bet on this because you will lose. I told her, you better prepare, this could just escalate all of the above as it has before.”
According to Bayless, he previously asked Barkley to stop using the word “kill,” but the Fox Sports host said his request was ignored and the threats only got worse. Even without an apology from the basketball Hall-of-Famer, Ernestine feels a sense of fulfillment after her fear of Barkley made national headlines.
“In the end, she feels some measure of satisfaction that I don’t feel,” Bayless admitted. “But for me, if this is the end of all of this madness and this mess that Ernestine and I have suffered through for 15 years, at least there’s this one silver lining. That my wife feels like she actually was able to do something about it through me.”
