Skip Bayless claps back at ‘clown’ Charles Barkley in ongoing spat

Skip Bayless wasn’t going to let Charles Barkley get away with dragging his name through the mud this time.

On TNT’s coverage of “The Match” on Thursday night, a golf contest pitting Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson against Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, Barkley took a swing at Bayless’ recent “Undisputed” divorce with longtime Fox Sports 1 co-host Shannon Sharpe while he praising Kelce and Sharpe’s on-field talents.

“He’s the best tight end, it’s between him and Gronk as the best ever. And I don’t want to leave out Shannon Sharpe,” Barkley said. “I want one of those jobs where I can get a buyout for working with an idiot.”

“What do you think Ernie?” Barkley later quipped. “You think I can get a buyout for working with Shaq?

“I’m just saying, if they’re gonna give people buyouts if they’re working with a damn idiot, I want one too!”

Bayless responded on Friday with a short and direct tweet.

“Still chuckling over a clown calling me an idiot,” he wrote.

Sharpe reached a buyout agreement with Fox Sports after friction with Bayless led to the end of a nearly seven-year run on “Undisputed.”

Sharpe was tearful on his last day on the show, telling Bayless he “gave [him] everything I had.”

It was the latest episode in a long feud between the Bayless and Barkley.

Earlier in June, Barkley told his TNT crew that he’d be happy to take a buyout for working with a “damn idiot,” this time taking aim at co-host Kenny Smith.

Barkley, whose taunts toward Bayless sometimes include threats of physical harm, has bothered Bayless’ wife for years with his banter, the Fox Sports host said in 2022.

“My wife Ernestine has believed for 15 years, that Charles Barkley is nothing but a sick individual,” Bayless said.

“To her, he is just pure evil, that he is depraved, that he is a scumbag and she fears that one day, Charles will somehow…inspire some other nut to end my life.

“And this haunts her, this hurts her because she believes that in the end, Charles Barkley would have my blood on his hands.”