Max Kellerman on Stephen A. Smith ‘First Take’ partnership: ‘Didn’t feel like a relationship was really forming’

There was a time when Max Kellerman seemed like the future of ESPN.

Initially hired as an analyst on ESPN’s boxing series, Friday Night Fights, he became the original host of Around the Horn before leaving the company over a contract dispute. After an ESPN Radio stint, Kellerman replaced Skip Bayless on First Take and went toe-to-toe with Stephen A. Smith until 2021, when Smith requested that he no longer be on the show. While Smith trashed him in interviews for years, Kellerman remained silent and stayed away from the Worldwide Leader, even skipping the celebratory final episodes of ATH.

After several teases and rumors, he finally resurfaced earlier this year for a Netflix boxing event, adding more boxing announcing to his list, and became the host of a Ring Magazine boxing show.

Now that he’s back in the sports media world, Kellerman is slowly starting to make the rounds. He made a major stop this week, appearing on The Bill Simmons Podcast, where you knew they were going to talk about the end of his First Take stint and how he feels about SAS. If there’s anyone who loves talking about why people left ESPN, it’s Simmons.

“We said we’re going to talk about you leaving ESPN, and you weren’t able to talk about a lot of stuff,” said Simmons. “And a lot of other people were talking, including people you did shows with. How frustrating was it for you to sit on the sidelines, be talked about, but not be able to talk?”

“That doesn’t bother me at all,” replied Kellerman. “You’re talking about me like, I’m not sweating anybody like that. But I was very flattered that… Because if you go off the air, you’re not sure that the sports world would care. But people seemed to care. I was like, ‘Oh, look at that. People are thinking about me.’ I was very flattered by it, to tell you the truth.

“In terms of the stuff that went down behind the scenes, there were things said to me in private early on that, it’s not like anyone said to me, ‘Hey, this is top secret. Don’t repeat this.’ But I think there’s a general understanding that if someone’s talking to you in private, it’s a private conversation. I wouldn’t repeat that unless they said it was okay to repeat what they told me. That’s what I could tell you about, the behind-the-scenes stuff on First Take, for example. But in terms of like, I’m really not worried about that stuff.”

Simmons then asked specifically about Smith, saying that he didn’t like the way the First Take host handled the aftermath. Kellerman responded with his bluntest pushback to date, saying that he completely understood why someone wouldn’t want to debate him every day.

“If you’re doing a debate show and you’re a competitive person, why would you want me as a partner?” asked Kellerman. “That’s bad. You want to go 15 rounds every day with ‘Muhammad Kellerman?’ That’s just bad. It’s embarrassing.

“‘I have an idea. This is what I want to put on TV. I want to spar Bud Crawford every day for 15 rounds, and I want everyone to see it.’ Eventually, you’re going to say, I don’t want to do that anymore.”

After Simmons brought up that Kellerman was replaced on the show by a rotating cast of co-hosts and analysts, he added that his understanding was that Smith seemed to want to be seen as a “solo act” rather than part of a pairing.

“That’s what I could tell you from my point of view,” he said. “I also think that if you make a calculation, that if you can be perceived as a solo act, really, that you can get paid at a certain level that you can’t if you’re not a solo act, then you’d like to be a solo act, or at least perceived that way.”

Kellerman went on to say that while he doesn’t feel like he needs a partner, he thinks it’s always a good thing for a debate-style or sports-talk program because he finds “conversations more interesting than just talking into the wind.” However, he did admit that “Stephen A was the one partner I’ve ever had over the years where I didn’t feel like a relationship was really forming.”

“I never had to worry about when the little red light came on that it wouldn’t be a show, but it would be like, you don’t want to be undermined,” he added.