Phil Mushnick responds to Craig Carton’s story about their near-confrontation: ‘No such thing happened’

Craig Carton has been telling a story about a dinner that almost ended in a punch, and the man on the other end of that punch wants everyone to know it didn’t happen that way.

Writing in the New York Post, Phil Mushnick called Carton’s account of the incident — in which Carton claimed he nearly punched Mushnick at a dinner last year and had to be physically separated before things got worse — a lie.

The dinner in question was a June 2024 banquet honoring Arnie Wexler, a gambling addiction counselor who has been a significant figure in Carton’s personal recovery. As we covered when Carton first told the story on WFAN, Carton — who was the keynote speaker that night — said he arrived at the event, saw Mushnick in the room, and was immediately offended by his presence, given that Mushnick had written critically about whether Carton’s recovery was genuine.

“I’m walking in, and I was gonna punch him in the face, and had to be separated from him because I didn’t think he belonged in that room,” Carton said on air, adding that Mushnick spent the evening sitting with “an evil smirk on his ugly fat face.”

Carton said Mushnick has access to his phone number and email, but the New York Post columnist never once contacted him to ask about his bout with gambling, continued recovery, and attempts at helping others who have struggled with the same addiction. Instead of asking about his gambling addiction, Mushnick heard Carton reference a point spread on his since-canceled FS1 morning show last year, and used that as fuel to question his recovery.

“I don’t gamble, I don’t encourage you to gamble, but part of my job talking sports on TV and on the radio, I have to be aware of the point spread cause sports fans are. And while I don’t encourage anybody to gamble, I acknowledged the spread of a game,” Carton said. “And 24 hours later, a scathing column that my recovery is bogus, that I’m a fraud when I talk about my recovery. It’s so personally offensive to me that a guy that has my number, has my email, saw my speech that night for Arnie Wexler, has the opportunity to talk to me about my recovery and the bad things I did pre-recovery, and instead, took one small moment when I acknowledged the point spread on a TV show, and accused me of lying about my recovery.

“That’s the type of scumbag this guy is. And I don’t wish bad things on anybody, I don’t. I used to, I don’t. But if I woke up tomorrow and Phil Mushnick wasn’t on this planet, that would be a better day for the planet. Because he’s an awful, hateful, despicable, angry, small-minded douchebag who does not deserve to breathe the same air that the rest of us breathe.”

Mushnick’s account, unsurprisingly, is different at nearly every turn. He says Carton interrupted a conversation he was having in the lobby, that he told Carton he was being rude, and that Carton stepped away. When Mushnick finished and approached Carton, he said the two talked about Mushnick’s habit of describing Carton as a convicted criminal — a label Carton, when pressed, confirmed was accurate. From there, Mushnick writes, they had “a reasonably civil conversation.”

No threats were made, no one intervened, and nothing resembling a physical confrontation took place.

“No such thing happened, nothing even close,” Mushnick wrote of Carton’s version.

Mushnick also used the column to surface a detail Carton left out of his WFAN retelling: that Carton had previously invited Mushnick to lunch to pitch himself as someone worth promoting, a meeting Mushnick attended and declined to act on. He closed by noting that it was “good to know” he still gets under Carton’s skin. Which, given the length and temperature of Carton’s on-air comments, is probably the only thing both men would agree on.