Shannon Sharpe has addressed pointed comments made by his former Baltimore Ravens teammate Ray Lewis after the Hall of Fame linebacker openly criticized Sharpe's approach to media and podcasting.
Lewis made his remarks on an episode of the PBD Podcast, where he expressed his disappointment in the type of content Sharpe has been producing since transitioning to the talk show and podcast world. Lewis said he is "shocked" by Sharpe's content and accused him of buying into the controversy-driven world of talk shows and gossip culture.
"That route is, is to become so worldly that you become popular because you're talking about ignorance," said Lewis. "A lot of times, a lot of these gossip conversations that they having and bringing up all this stuff. I'm not going to do that to nobody. I'm in life to try to teach people what does it mean to be a better man or get back to the Kingdom."
Sharpe caught wind of his former teammate's comments and proceeded to respond on his Nightcap show with Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson. The three-time Super Bowl champion took the high road and acknowledged how people are taking shots at him.
"I got nothing bad to say," Sharpe said. "It's low-hanging fruit and there are a lot of people taking your shot at your boy. Come on now. Y'all can have it, y'all got me."
Sharpe suggested that the recent wave of criticism directed his way is more about timing than substance: "Everybody want to get a lick now because when your boy was doing good, a lot of people didn't have a whole lot to say."
While Sharpe wasn't explicit, his comments about timing undoubtedly referred to him settling a sexual assault case in July and his subsequent firing by ESPN.
This latest interaction between Sharpe and Lewis comes more than two decades after Sharpe publicly gave an impassioned speech defending Lewis ahead of Super Bowl XXXV, following Lewis' guilty plea to obstruction of justice in a 2000 double-murder case.