Harrison Butker apparently did not get pleasure from watching Serena Williams joke that he wasn’t welcome on this planet of girls’s sports activities.
A day after the tennis legend roasted him onstage alongside her sister Venus and “Abbott Elementary” creator and star Quinta Brunson, the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs kicker issued a press release to NBC Information complaining concerning the joke:
“I assumed Mrs. Williams was an incredible host and applaud her for utilizing her platform to specific her beliefs on a wide range of matters.”
He added: “Sports activities are speculated to be the nice unifier and at an occasion devoted to celebrating a various group of women and men who’ve achieved nice feats, she used it as a possibility to disinvite these with whom she disagrees with from supporting fellow athletes.”
Butker was in attendance on the occasion, however was not proven on digital camera after Williams made her dig. Chiefs head coach Andy Reid was additionally there and accepted the Greatest NFL Participant award on behalf of Patrick Mahomes.
The road about Butker got here throughout a phase by which the Williams sisters and Brunson gave a tongue-in-cheek seminar on tips on how to get pleasure from girls’s sports activities. Butker wasn’t the one individual to be the butt of a joke — the trio subtly known as out ESPN’s Pat McAfee for calling Caitlin Clark a “white bitch from Indiana” and Williams made a crack about how successful a Grand Slam whereas pregnant is extra spectacular than if LeBron James received an NBA championship along with his son Bronny.
The Butker line, nonetheless, was probably the most direct. It got here on the finish of the phase when Venus was explaining how everybody ought to get into girls’s sports activities, to which Serena mentioned “Besides you, Harrison Butker. We do not want you.”
Brunson added “In any respect. Like, ever,” whereas the group broke into laughter and applause.
“So, go forward and revel in girls’s sports activities such as you would every other sports activities, as a result of they’re sports activities.” – Venus Williams
“Besides you, Harrison Butker. We do not want you.” – Serena Williams
“In any respect. Like, ever.” – Quinta Brunson #ESPYS pic.twitter.com/RhvxfiHUWN
— Terrible Saying (@awfulannouncing) July 12, 2024
Butker has change into probably the most divisive figures within the NFL since his graduation deal with at Benedictine School in Atchison, Kansas. Butker spoke on a number of politically sensitive topics, together with his opposition to abortion, his opposition to in vitro fertilization, his opposition to LGBTQ delight, a false declare concerning the Antisemitism Consciousness Act not too long ago handed by the U.S. Home and his perception that girls have been instructed “diabolical lies” about pursuing skilled careers reasonably than turning into homemakers.
The final topic obtained criticism and mockery from many, together with a Chiefs division rival. The NFL shortly distanced itself from the assertion, whereas the Chiefs’ greatest names expressed their private assist for Butker as an individual and his proper to say what he believed, even when they did not agree with what he mentioned.
There was doubtless no scarcity of feminine athletes on the ESPYs who disagreed with Butker’s feedback. One in every of them simply occurred to be answerable for the microphone for the evening.
