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If Ryan Murphy ever decides to start making TV about straight men, we’ve got one great big FEUD brewing in the sports/culture podcast universe. Actor/podcaster/self-proclaimed “MVP of talking trash” Michael Rapaport took to his I Am Rapaport podcast today to fire both barrels at podcaster extraordinaire Bill Simmons. Simmons, the former ESPN enfant terrible whose jump to HBO resulted in the ill-fated sports/culture series Any Given Wednesday, had many times welcomed Rapaport onto his various podcasts at ESPN and The Ringer over the years, and their discussion of sports and pop culture were some of those shows’ most spirited (“the most iconic,” according to Rapaport, of course), but that relationship certainly seems to have soured.
Rapaport, who’s recently apepared on the Netflix series Atypical and Jay Pharoh’s Showtime series White Famous, says that Simmons repeatedly rebuffed his recent requests to guest on Simmons’s Ringer podcast to promote his latest book (This Book Has Balls), and Rapaport is pissed about it. “I consider this guy a friend,” Rapaport said, but followed with, “I’m hurt, I’m upset, and I’m offended.” In his typical, vociferously boastful style, Rapaport proclaims himself one of Simmons’s all-time most iconic guests. And while there seems to be enmity between Rapaport’s podcast overlords at Barstool Sports and Simmons, Rapaport stresses that he always stuck up for Simmons on the air. That support seems to have gone by the wayside now that Rapaport has felt Simmons’s cold shoulder. And Rapaport isn’t holding anything back.
In particular, he talks about having been a guest in a segment (“the best thing on that show”) of Any Given Wednesday where he and Simmons held a mock trial about Deflategate, a recurring topic for Simmons which incidentally was the same subject that Ben Affleck popped off about in the Any Given Wednesday premiere.
On Tuesday’s podcast, Rapaport refers to Any Given Wednesday, which was cancelled last November, as a “crusty, stale from the start, never got better, bullshit HBO show.” Check those eyebrows, because they just got burned right off your face.
Rapaport went on, though, in a rant underscored by smooth soul jams to contrast the vulgarity on display, “You c***sucker, you. You player-hating motherf–ker, you; your time is up! You see us on the sports iTunes, podcast charts, consistently ahead of you.”
So it’s an old-fashioned podcast turf war, looks like. If you want to listen to the full rant, check out I Am Rapaport on iTunes. In the meantime, you can check local burn units where Bill Simmons is likely seeking treatment.
