ESPYs host Serena Williams and Quinta Brunson took a jab at Kansas Metropolis Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker through the awards ceremony Thursday evening.
The second occurred as Williams and Brunson mentioned girls’s sports activities with Venus Williams on the sports activities awards present.
“So, go forward and luxuriate in girls’s sports activities such as you would some other sports activities, as a result of they’re sports activities,” Venus mentioned.
“Besides you, Harrison Butker. We don’t want you,” Serena quipped.
“In any respect. Like, ever,” Brunson added because the viewers laughed.
Butker attended the ESPYs, however the digicam didn’t pan to him to catch his response.
In a press release Friday, Butker mentioned, “I believed Mrs. Williams was an excellent host and applaud her for utilizing her platform to precise her beliefs on quite a lot of matters.”
He added: “Sports activities are imagined to be the nice unifier and at an occasion devoted to celebrating a various group of women and men who’ve completed nice feats, she used it as a chance to disinvite these with whom she disagrees with from supporting fellow athletes.”
The NFL kicker acquired widespread backlash over his graduation speech in Might at Benedictine Faculty when he asserted that one of many “most essential” roles for a lady is being a homemaker.
“What number of of you’re sitting right here now, about to cross this stage, and are occupied with all of the promotions and titles you’re going to get in your profession? A few of you might go on to guide profitable careers on the planet,” he mentioned throughout his speech.
“However I’d enterprise to guess that almost all of you’re most enthusiastic about your marriage and the youngsters you’ll carry into this world,” Butker mentioned.
Criticism rapidly adopted, with some graduating college students saying his remarks have been “uncomfortable” and that it was not the “time and place.”
A spokesperson for the NFL advised Folks Journal that Butker’s “views will not be these of the NFL as a company.”
Butker mentioned he has no regrets concerning the feedback he made throughout his speech.
Williams is not first superstar to blast Butker throughout a present. Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder took intention on the kicker through the band’s Las Vegas live performance in Might, saying, “There’s nothing extra masculine than a powerful man supporting a powerful girl.”