With Stephen A. Smith on vacation, ESPN turned to Domonique Foxworth to sit alongside Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo on Wednesday morning. The former NFL corner came to play.
Sports debate shows have always been about entertaining the audience. Foxworth embraced that and took to Twitter to ask his followers what they wanted to see.
Ryan Cortes, who works with Domonique Foxworth at ESPN’s black culture vertical Andscape documented the action. He kept a running list of the controversial opinions Foxworth threw out. Cortes noted that Foxworth wasted no time trying to raise Mad Dog’s eyebrows.
The two put on a great performance together. The over-the-top eyerolls and yelling was peak First Take.
It seemed like Domonique Foxworth got close to his goal of triggering a Mad Dog rant when the two discussed ESPN’s top ten quarterbacks. Mad Dog took exception to Dak Prescott making the list and Foxworth couldn’t understand why.
In the middle of a discussion of the NBA’s salary cap, Domonique Foxworth declared himself the winner of their debate, saying that he “cooked” Mad Dog on TV for the last 30 minutes. It drew laughter from Jay Williams and applause from Russo himself.
Whether or not Domonique Foxworth will get more time on First Take in the future remains to be seen. What is clear is that he gets the purpose of the show and he came to play and engage Chris Russo in a way that let both of them shine.
