Steve Smith TORCHES NFL Reporter For Incorrectly Saying He Got Knocked Out At UFC 302

The number one job of a reporter doing any kind of journalism is to get the facts straight. If you don’t, you don’t automatically become unreliable, but you still look like an idiot.

ESPN NFL insider Ryan Evans re-learned this lesson the hard way last night.

UFC 302 was held in Newark, NJ on Saturday evening, but the octagon wasn’t the only place where a fight broke out. Two angry fans broke out into a fist fight, and one man knocked out his combatant with a devastating right hook.

But what made this clip go viral (other than a fan getting his sent into the shadow realm) was the fact that Evans claimed that the man knocked unconscious was former Carolina Panthers and Baltimore Ravens legend Steve Smith Sr. I couldn’t tell you exactly what led Evans to believe this, but here we are.

Smith - an analyst for NFL Network - caught wind of this on his own X account, and promptly provided proof (I adore alliteration) that he was not only not a fan in the fight, but he wasn't even at UFC 302.

Where was he, you might ask? Doing his job by discussing NFL preseason action for his employer.

That’s definitely not Evans’ brightest moment. I mean, couldn’t he have just done a quick check on NFL Network to see if Smith was on the clock? An NFL insider like him has to know that Smith works for this channel.

(As an aside, I don’t think Smith should have insinuated that Evans was being racist with his observation. Thankfully, that’s where that element of this interaction ended).

To his credit, Evans did offer an apology filled with some self-deprecating humor, as well as a (stupid) reason why he thought Smith got knocked out.

Why Evans thought that Smith could be the only black guy in the world who could wear that type of hat is beyond me. There have been a couple of times when I’ve mistaken who people are at a distance, but I’m not stupid enough to share those faulty observations on social media.

Unfortunately for Evans, his apology did not have the desired effect. Smith called him out again for his ridiculous mistake. 

If Evans had applied basic journalistic principles to this situation, he could have saved himself a lot of public embarrassment. But the urge to be recognized on social media was apparently just too hard to ignore.