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Eight months after Steven A. Smith claimed he would divorce tennis star Serena Williams over her appearance on the Super Bowl Halftime Show, her husband, Alexis Ohanian, finally got his chance to clap back.
On the Thursday, October 9, episode of ESPN’s First Take, Ohanian, 42, came to her defense at the end of a segment while talking to Smith, the show’s host.
“Stephen A. Smith, I think you had some marriage advice for me,” Ohanian said on the show.
“Listen, I didn’t,” Smith responded, seemingly at a loss for words. “Headlines are headlines. We can get into that another time. … I am not qualified. Marital advice? No, not me.”
Smith made some strong comments in February, after Williams joined Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show in an apparent dig at Drake. Williams and Drake were romantically linked in the early 2010s, but never publicly confirmed their alleged romance.
During the show, as Lamar rapped his hit “Not Like Us” (a diss track aimed at Drake), the camera panned to Williams, who was crip walking on top of a platform on the makeshift stage. (The dance was popularized by gang members in Compton, California, where both Lamar and Williams were raised.)
The day after the Super Bowl, on First Take, Smith gave his thoughts on the tennis star’s appearance.
“If I’m married and my wife is going to join trolling her ex, go back to his ass,” Smith said. “Cause clearly you don’t belong with me. What you worried about him for and you’re with me? Bye. Bye.”
Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, responded directly to Smith about those comments on Thursday.
“Well I was going to ask you, because you haven’t been married before, right?” Ohanian said. “Because I give advice to plenty of founders who want to build billion-dollar companies, and the reason I do that is because I built billion-dollar companies. So I generally try to stay in my lane in the advice department.”
Smith didn’t have a chance to say much else after that as the Thursday segment wrapped up.
Ohanian and Williams have been married since 2017 and share daughters Alexis Olympia Jr, 8, and Adira River, 2.
Ohanian was, of course, a fan of Williams’ Super Bowl appearance, posting supportive messages on social media at the time of the show.
“Pretty fantastic halftime show,” Ohanian wrote via X. He also reposted a tweet of Williams dancing with a caption that read, “Highlight of the Super Bowl.”
Venus Williams also supported her younger sister after the show.
“Lil sis killing it,” Venus wrote via her Instagram Story, reposting Serena’s video from the performance.
Serena Williams herself brushed off the criticism at the time, saying she didn’t “care” about it.
“That’s the least of my worries,” she said. “I’m so excited I was able to do the dance. I’m glad I did it!”
This isn’t the first time Ohanian has publicly defended his wife’s Super Bowl performance. He also confronted columnist Jason Whitlock, who called Ohanian a “true beta” after the show.
“I get it—you’re 57, and life didn’t turn out the way you imagined,” Ohanian wrote on social media to Whitlock. “That kind of disappointment must be exhausting. You’re the embodiment of peaked in high school, spending decades chasing validation from strangers through Likes and Digital Hugs, only to find that no amount of external approval fills the void. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
