You know you’re having a tough night at the ESPYs when People calls you out for a performance “that appeared to fall flat.” For Shane Gillis, host of the sports awards show, the boos were another sign it wasn’t going great.
Gillis did get laughs at some points during his opening monologue. Bill Belichick and his girlfriend Jordan Hudson are always fair game, apparently, and the comedian got his biggest laughs with jokes like this after a Shohei Otani bookie bit: “A bookie is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bedtime. They read, Very Horny Caterpillar, The Little Engine That Could But Needed A Pill First and, of course, the classic, Good Night Boobs.”
His follow-up Belichick joke wasn’t as well received, for obvious reasons: “He won six Super Bowls. He’s dating a hot 24-year-old. Maybe if you guys won six Super Bowls, you wouldn’t be sitting next to a fat ugly dog wife.”
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The former Mrs. Belichick wasn’t in the audience to take that shovel to the face.
Gillis also divided the audience with Caitlin Clark jokes like:
- “When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she’s going to work at a Waffle House so she can continue doing what she loves most: fistfighting Black women.”
- “Caitlin Clark and I have a lot in common. We’re both whites from the Midwest who have nailed a bunch of threes.”
After a middling response, Gillis told the crowd to “lighten up a little. This is not serious.”
Making sure he offended everyone, Gillis also got political on the ESPYs stage. “Joe Rogan actually wanted me to be here to host this award show so that I could capture Adam Silver because Joe thinks he’s an alien. And Donald Trump wanted me to be here to capture Juan Soto for the same reason.”
That line got audible boos, but Gillis wasn’t done with Trump jokes: “Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn. The last time he staged a fight in D.C., Mike Pence almost died.”
More laughs this time, but Gillis still ripped a page out of the Jo Koy Struggling Emcee Playbook, telling the audience, “I didn’t write it.”
For an accomplished comedian, Gillis struggles with monologues on the big stage. He received poor reviews for his most recent Saturday Night Live opening as well, weird because stand-up should be his forte.
As Gillis concluded his monologue, he provided a self-evaluation to the crowd. “Well, I see a lot of you don’t like me, and that’s okay,” he said. “That went about as exactly how we all thought it was gonna go.”
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