Following the Florida Panthers winning a second consecutive Stanley Cup championship on Tuesday night, The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz spoke about the accomplishment with several media personalities and contributors both remotely and in studio. Amid the third hour of the program though, some of the discussion deviated towards the ongoing media feud between FS1 host Nick Wright and Meadowlark Media sports journalist and podcast host Pablo Torre.
The origin of this media beef came from when Wright divulged that he considers himself to have rivals in the business who are around his age on the national level. Wright appeared on Torre’s podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, but he was invited back and subsequently did not reply, and upon making remarks about such, was banned from the program.
Wright conveyed that he was reading another profile of Torre in New York Magazine and intimated a sense of fatigue, asking why Meadowlark Media and DraftKings extending their partnership had not warranted a story. In reviewing the article, he stated that it took 13 words before the Peabody Awards were mentioned, a prestigious journalism honor for which an episode of Torre’s show was nominated. Wright proceeded to play a supercut of Torre’s conversation with Bill Simmons after their apparent feud over reporting surrounding Bill Belichick.
“This is really just a defense of the Le Batard Show,” Wright said. “If you weren’t watching your guys’ show the day you announced your latest partnership with your friends and my friends at DraftKings, I don’t know if anyone knows about it. Meanwhile, you could have been on an around the world, 180-day cruise, and you are still — you’re inundated with updates on the world according to Garp via Pablo Torre. It’s just a weird media diet as far as what people think is relevant and what’s not, and I just thought you guys, going out on your own doing a thing, where’s that profile?”
Wright was asking for distribution of glowing pieces, something he admitted could be a sense of jealousy from him. Shortly thereafter, he discovered that former ESPN Around the Horn host Tony Reali was in studio with Le Batard and asked to take back everything he had just said. Torre appeared on the sports debate program over the years where he accrued 138.75 victories, and Wright feared that Reali would now think that he was “an ass” having never spoken to him before outside of DMs.
“I think you are who you are, but I would say it’s possible you’re online a little too much, and this is advice I would impart,” Reali explained. “It’s just a little bit too much – that’s all, that’s all. I mean, you’re keeping up with the amount of mentions of people in certain publications.”
As the segment continued, Wright explained that he did log off the internet and proceeded to pick up a copy of New York Magazine with the article about Torre. Le Batard later acknowledged that Reali conveying he thinks Wright is who he is was the most unkind thing he had heard him say. This resulted in Reali clarifying that it was meant as a compliment and that knowing who you are equates to 95% of life, but contributor Jonathan Zaslow added that it came right after Wright said he feared he would come off in the wrong way. Reali then said that he needs “some street cred” and could start a public feud, something Wright sees that people like in the media space.
“It’s a first cousin of the amount of people who don’t really watch regular-season NBA but consume a ton of NBA gossip, content, podcasts,” Wright said. “There are a lot of people who don’t necessarily watch the sports talk shows but really like when people involved in those shows appear to be feuding. Again, I didn’t have enough time to really put a fine point on it, but that is an odd thing that definitely exists.”
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