Gillis draws boos and laughs amid jabs at Caitlin Clark and Donald Trump at Espys ceremony | Sport

The opening monologue of actor Shane Gillis as host of the Espys award ceremony took place awkwardly in front of some of the biggest names in sport on Wednesday evening.

At first, he called various famous faces in the crowd of the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, including the retired star of the WNBA Diana Taurasi, who received the Icon award later in the evening. Gillis asked the crowd to “give up Taurasi”, but only after calling the six times Olympic champion “Deanna”. The camera showed a taurasse without smiling shaking its head. Gillis quickly caught his error, saying: “My pain about it.”

Gillis then went to another basketball star, Caitlin Clark, who was not at the ceremony when she dealt with an injury before the WNBA star match this weekend.

“When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she will work in a waffle house so that she can continue to do what she likes most: the fist fighting black women,” he joked. While some in the public laughed, others seemed uncomfortable.

Gillis continued for 10 minutes, pulling a dispersion of the hoots at one point, with jokes on Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

“Donald Trump wants to organize a UFC fight on the lawn of the White House. The last time he organized a fight at DC, Mike Pence was almost died,” said Gillis. He then turned to Epstein, saying: “He was supposed to be an Epstein joke here, but I guess it was deleted.” Last week, the Ministry of Justice and the FBI announced that an examination of cases of the cases confirmed that Epstein had committed suicide and that there was no list of its customers to make public.

Gillis’ performance has attracted mixed criticism on social networks, some praising his Trump review, while others criticized the racial reference to Clark at a time when WNBA players were the subject of online fanatic. Gillis was abandoned from the distribution of Saturday Night Live in 2019 after podcast sequences were made on the manufacture of racist, homophobic and misogynist comments. Gillis apologized at the time, saying in a statement that he was “an actor who pushes the limits” but who “sometimes lacked”. He returned to the guest host of the show in 2024.

Gillis was on a safer field when he made a light blow to the title MVP of the NBA Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Canadian star, who won the NBA title with Oklahoma City Thunder in June, sparked criticism to shoot mistakes during the matches. He smiled when Gillis said, “SGA is there. Everyone seated around him is in great difficulty.”

Gillis also obtained a good reception for a joke on the former coach of the New England Patriots Bill Belichick and his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson. “A bookmaker is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bedtime,” said Gillis of the 73 -year -old man.

Before finishing his monologue, a smiling gillis said: “I see a lot of you don’t like me and that’s ok. That’s it for me. It did exactly how we all thought it was going to happen. I don’t know why it happened.”

Gilgeous-Alexander and Simone Biles were named the best male and female athletes once the ceremony began. Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder to the first title of the franchise at Oklahoma City while directing the NBA by scoring. “It is a dream come true and for dreams to come true, you need a village,” he said, thanking his wife, his parents, his brother and his others. “These names probably don’t mean much, but for me, they mean everything.”

Biles, an Olympic medalist of 11 times, also won the first prize for the evening, the best championship performance for its efforts at the Paris Games. She won three gold medals and money at the Olympic Games last summer. “It was very unexpected, especially in a category of all men,” said Biles after defeating Stephen Curry, Freddie Freeman and Rory Mcilroy at the championship prices.

The Biles Olympic teammate Suni Lee won the best return price for overcoming two rare kidney diseases to help the United States win the team in Paris. She brought one of her doctors to the show.