As he is wont to do, Pat McAfee attempted to work some current events into his call of WWE Raw on Monday night.
“A lot of people look at this size difference and think J.D. has no chance,” McAfee said during a match between Braun Strowman and JD McDonagh. “Mark Davis is 70-years-old and is expecting child with a 26-year-old. Anything is possible in this modern world!”
There was just one problem: As it turns out, the woman in question, Hayden Hopkins, is not expecting a child with Davis. Rather, others jumped to that conclusion after she announced her pregnancy, simply because she had been spotted in the Las Vegas Raiders owner’s box years ago.
As is often the case in today’s day and age of social media, that irresponsible speculation turned into an apparent fact for many after NFL news aggregator Dov Kleiman reported it as such on his account in a now-deleted post. After Hopkins took to social media to state that Davis is not, in fact, the father of her unborn child, McAfee issued an apology on ESPN’s airwaves.
“I apologize for perpetuating a lie,” McAfee said on Tuesday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show. “I understand how happy you guys should be at this moment. It would suck to have a 70-year-old billionaire kind of looming over the entire — so I would like to apologize to Hayden and let the world know, hey, we’ve gotta get these things right. We’re obviously a part of this. I spread lies in the the middle of a Braun Strowman-JD McDonagh match last night. Mark Davis is not the father. But we would like to congratulate Joey and Hayden Hopkins on a beautiful baby coming this fall. Congrats on doing it. It’s bulls***.”
While it obviously would have been preferable for McAfee to have verified the information beforehand, it’s a credit to him that he took accountability and addressed the mistake head on. As the former All-Pro punter said, we’ve gotta get these things right, as this entire situation showed how an inaccurate social media post based on little more than speculation can make its way to being broadcast on one of the most-watched shows in all of television.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.