That Stephen A. Smith and Cari Champion reunion did not go as expected. In an extraordinary turn of events, Smith seemed to hash out the unaddressed feelings regarding Champion’s exit from First Take. But the conversation veered into an unexpected revelation: the sports broadcasting titan was getting catfished! When he thought he was revealing Champion’s sneaky attempt to return to ESPN, he discovered someone impersonating his former ESPN colleague had been fooling him for at least a year.

The stunning revelation surfaced during a fiery sit-down on the Flagrant and Funny podcast, hosted by Champion and fellow ex-ESPN anchor Jemele Hill. The trio gathered for a nearly three-hour conversation to address years of behind-the-scenes friction, but the highlight quickly pivoted to a bizarre mix-up surrounding the high-profile exit of long-time First Take host Molly Qerim.

The drama unfolded when Smith claimed he was a major catalyst in Champion’s career advancement at ESPN. While defending his track record as a supportive mentor, Smith alleged that Champion had recently reached out to him to reclaim her old desk following Qerim’s departure.

“When Molly resigned a few months ago, did you not reach out?” Smith asked, doubling down on his assertion. “You wanted the job for SportsCenter. You wanted to come back.”

Champion, who moderated First Take alongside Smith and Skip Bayless before leaving the network in 2020, looked visibly stunned by the allegation.

“That is not true, Stephen A. I know you lying,” Champion fired back.

When Smith claimed, “Then we’ll disagree… I don’t lie,” Cari doubled down on her denial.

“I never, not once, called you to say, ‘Can you get me back to SportsCenter?’… Molly Qerim? Molly. What? Where? By the way, when?”

Smith maintained his stance, insisting he was merely recalling a direct plea from Champion via text: “You did not reach out to me and say we need to talk when Molly resigned? ‘When Molly resign, we need to talk. I need to talk to you. I need to be back in that seat.’ You say that this one.”

“Oh no, Stephen. I can’t let you roll with that one, dog,” Champion responded, completely baffled. After a lot of back and forth, Champion finally questioned, “Stephen A., do you know who’s texting you? Because was that a text? I’m being serious.”

To prove she had made no such request, Champion pulled out her phone and read through her sent messages live on air.

Champion highlighted that her actual text log to Smith consisted of unanswered check-ins from previous years, including a September 16, 2025, message reading, “Sir, it’s Cari. I would like to chat off the record. Call me”—rather than job inquiries.

She also demanded that he show his receipts. That’s when Smith revealed that he had changed his phone number, rendering any recent texts to his old number impossible to retrieve.

Now here’s the thing. When SAS said he had changed his number, it clicked for Champion and Hill. The ladies and their podcast production had been trying to get Smith on the show for a while, but their messages to him were going unread, or someone asked who they were.

Now they realize the new owner of Smith’s number was receiving their texts. But no one knows who was texting Smith on his number.

Faced with the paper trail, a stunned Smith backtracked and admitted he had likely been responding to an imposter.

“Then it was somebody who pretended to be her,” Smith conceded, as laughter broke out in the studio.

So, yeah, even though Stephen A. Smith claims he never lies, sometimes even he doesn’t know he doesn’t have the full truth.

The mix-up comes against the backdrop of Qerim’s exit from ESPN’s flagship show, a vacancy eventually filled by former SportsCenter anchor Shae Peppler Cornette under the direction of ESPN executive David Roberts.

For Champion, who now hosts her own show on Amazon Prime, the suggestion that she was lobbying for her former seat was particularly jarring, given her public statements about feeling underutilized during her initial run on First Take.

The podcast episode provided a rare, unfiltered look into long-standing tensions among former ESPN personalities. Throughout the conversation, Hill also confronted Smith regarding how she felt unsupported during her own contentious suspension from the network.

While the debate grew heated, the confrontation over the text messages offered a moment of unexpected levity, exposing how even one of sports media’s most powerful figures could fall victim to a digital fake.