Charles Barkley and Aaron Rodgers have both said they’re in the final seasons of their careers, with Barkley saying this will be his last year on Inside the NBA and Rodgers insisting that 2026 will be his last in the NFL. But Barkley wants to make it clear that his farewell tour is going to look a lot different.
During an appearance on Mad Dog Sports Radio on Wednesday, Barkley was asked about his own retirement tour and how it compares to Rodgers’. And the Hall of Famer took a pretty clear shot at the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, saying that he won’t be trashing his exes on the way out the door.
Rodgers’ Farewell Tour
Rodgers announced back in May that the 2026 season would be his final one in the NFL. And he hasn’t exactly been quiet on his way out.
In September, Rodgers went on teammate Cam Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast and made several eyebrow-raising comments about people from his past. He said that his ex-fiancée, actress Shailene Woodley, told him “I don’t want to be with you” after an attempted reconciliation in 2021, and that ex-girlfriend Danica Patrick “was depressed and not fun to be around” after she retired, via The Sporting News.
He also took veiled shots at two former Green Bay Packers teammates, widely understood to be Greg Jennings and Jermichael Finley, saying one “was bitter because he went to another team and never became a player again” and “the other was just not a smart person.”
On that same podcast, Rodgers also called ESPN “a gutless organization”.
‘Burn Every Bridge’
Barkley, who has repeatedly said that this NBA season will be his last on TV, was talking with Adam Schein when the comparison to Rodgers came up. And he made it clear that he doesn’t plan to follow the quarterback’s lead.
“But I tell you what though, I’m not gonna bury everybody going out the door like Aaron,” Barkley said, via Awful Announcing. “I’m not gonna burn every bridge and talk bad about all my exes on my way out the door like he’s doing.”
Of course, Barkley has never been shy about calling people out either. He has been openly critical of TNT Sports executives for how they handled the network’s loss of NBA rights, and he just spoke out against Troy Aikman amid the reported tension in ESPN’s Monday Night Football booth.
There’s also the question of whether Barkley actually retires. He has been teasing his TV exit for close to a decade, and admitted earlier this month that he’d “probably do it a year or more” if Ernie Johnson decided to keep going.
Clearly, nobody is doubting that Rodgers is done after this season. Barkley might be a different story.
The post Charles Barkley takes shot at Aaron Rodgers appeared first on The Comeback: Today’s Top Sports Stories & Reactions.