After famed football coach Bill Belichick, 73, responded to the ongoing backlash surrounding his awkward CBS interview with 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson, his “great friend” and fellow sports legend Charles Barkley admitted he’s “concerned” about the situation.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” Barkley said during his Wednesday, April 30 appearance on the Dan Patrick Show.
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“He’s been a great friend for me for a long time,” the 62-year-old sports analyst continued. “We’ve been great friends since he coached for the Browns. I think he’s got to be very careful right now. This is starting to be on a very slippery slope. He’s the greatest football coach ever. Him and [former University of Alabama coach] Nick Saban. For college, Nick Saban. For Bill, the NFL.”
“From what I’m hearing, it’s starting to be a very slippery slope,” Barkley added. “And I never talk about people’s personal relationships — that’s another rule I got. But, I will admit, I’m a little concerned with some of the stuff that’s going on. I might actually reach out to him to make sure everything’s good, but I am concerned from what I’m hearing. It’s not a good look, right, I’ll admit that.”
In a statement released this week, Belichick denied there was any cause for concern and defended Hudson, who was criticized for frequently interrupting his CBS interview.
“She was not deflecting any specific question or topic but simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track,” Belichick said in the statement, as Newsweek reported. “Some of the clips make it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met, but we have been open about the fact that Jordon and I met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021.”
“The final eight-minute segment does not reflect the productive 35-minute conversation we had, which covered a wide range of topics related to my career,” he continued. “Instead, it presents selectively edited clips and still from a few minutes of the interview to suggest a false narrative — that Jordon was attempting to control the conversation — which is simply not true.”
Related: Jordon Hudson Shares Cryptic Message From Bill Belichick Amid Ongoing Backlash
