Baltimore Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey is standing his ground after criticizing Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles for bowing to Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade during the Paris Olympics.
Andrade, who won the gold medal in the floor final, was praised on stage by her American colleagues, who both bowed to her as the champion on the mat.
Humphrey was not particularly happy about this and immediately tweeted: ‘This is truly disgusting.’
He explained it from his own perspective on his podcast ‘Punch Line’ in the latest episode on Sunday.
“Dude, let me give you my perspective. I go on Twitter and I’m like, what the frick? Why are we bowing down to somebody? This is America, why are we bowing down to some other country? I didn’t even know what country that was, honestly.
Rebeca Andrade (center) receives bows from Americans Simone Biles (left) and Jordan Chiles (right)
Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey saw that scene and posted his disapproval on Twitter
‘I just saw two people bowing, I said this is crazy from a very human perspective, ethically. Should never bow to a man but God. So I said, “Golly this is wild.”
‘Tweeted that and said, “Damn, that’s Simone Biles. I might be getting cooked by Biles’ army.” I’m clearly not a gymnast… I didn’t know if she had an army.’
Humphrey then said he didn’t think anything of his tweet until people at practice came up to him and asked him about his comments.
Team owner Steve Bisciotti and general manager Eric DeCosta also asked him about his tweet.
He also said that his follower count increased dramatically and he was getting a lot of comments with Brazilian flags and, as Humphrey called it, “Brazilian talk.”
“When I stopped training I thought ‘what have I done?’ and they said ‘your tweet’. I thought ‘what’s with that?’ I think it came down to me disrespecting Brazil.”
‘The funny thing is I was like, “This is lit,” because followers were secretly acting dumb… so it didn’t affect me at all. I was like, “I’m just going to pop, I’m a bit him now.” I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad media.’
Humphrey said he was trying to learn “a little Brazilian” so he could respond to the many tweets he received.
His tweet angered Brazilians who enjoyed the show of respect from the Americans
Humphrey even decided to mock former First Lady Michelle Obama on his show
It should be noted that when his co-host and editor corrected him by saying that people in Brazil speak Portuguese, he again referred to the language as “Brazilian” before saying, “If you’re going to insult me, at least translate it to English and then post it.”
After hearing Bisciotti and DeCosta, he spoke about reacting to Michelle Obama’s bow.
‘It was about three days later that she said, “I think this is such a good thing,” it wasn’t necessarily [because of me but] it was, it was. I was like, “Michelle Obama knows me?” It’s a little bit of fire.
‘I was in the White House, was at [Barack] Obama, so she might have had her eye on me when I was in college. I’m just saying, [I] was at her bedside.’
Humphrey concluded: ‘In short, to be honest, I’ve never really had any disdain for the Brazilian people, but I did have disdain for them. I thought about making amends, and then I said, “I haven’t really done anything”… To be honest, I don’t even know where Brazil is on the map. So it would be hard for me to really argue with Brazil.’
Luckily for Humphrey, he doesn’t play for the Philadelphia Eagles or the Green Bay Packers; the two teams open their seasons on Friday in Brazil.
He did say, ‘I’m not going to lie, but I’ll say this: if we were playing in Brazil, I wouldn’t leave my hotel room, I wouldn’t play football.’