Comedian Marlon Wayans is known for giving his unsolicited advice and opinion. Therefore, he couldn’t help but weigh in on the viral clips of Cam Newton getting jumped at a “We Ball Sports” 7-on-7 youth football tournament in Atlanta last month.
The brawl was captured on cellphone video and posted all over social media. The attackers, dressed in all-black hoodies and sweats, were adults and members of an opposing team in the tournament. But to Wayans they looked like they could be teens as he made a comedic bit admonishing Newton for not pulling out his belt and beating the wayward kids.
“He should have pulled out his belt and beat the s—t out them kids,” the “White Chicks” actor and producer said on his Instagram, adding that that’s what he would have done.
Wayans continued, “Punish their a—. Cam, pull out your f—king belt… beat them f—king kids and punish their a—.”
The hilarious bit poked fun at the NFL MVP getting assaulted at the tournament by a cohort of men from the TopShelf Performance group.
Better camera angle of the beginning of the fight when TSP crew tried to jump Cam Newton by blindsiding him with a punch. pic.twitter.com/TBZWc2q4nL
— The Art Of Dialogue (@ArtOfDialogue_) February 25, 2024
Allegedly, Cam was talking trash about how good his two teams were and said that if anyone beats his team, he would “pay every single player on the team.”
It seems that the TopShelf Performance team won and never got paid. The team leadership, TJ and Steph Brown, was not having it, and allegedly those were the men seen sucker-punching the football legend in viral video footage online.
One of the leaders of the team apologized for his part in the melee and said it was a little more than just not getting paid.
“First and foremost, what I want to do is I wanna apologize to everybody that was out there and to the parents of not just our team but everybody,” TJ Brown said on Atlanta’s radio station 105.3 The Beat. “Like, that should’ve never happened. We should’ve been able to sit down and talk. There’s no reason we should be yelling at each other while a game’s going on. … Ain’t none of that necessary.”
TJ explained that Cam was taunting during the competition for “no reason,” and it bothered them. One of the things that the retired NFL player allegedly said to one of the men that he has known for five years is “I made y’all,” before grabbing Steph by the collar.
Cam gave his side of what happened, saying it was trash talking that really just went too far.
“Verbal communication is what people use to distract, to deter, to get in another person’s head and there was a lot of talking on both sides,” he explained on his “4th & 1 podcast, before saying, “I don’t want to point the finger and say, well, this person said this or that person said that. Am I saying this is the first time it happened or last time it will happen? It’s just something that … it starts with words and it should have ended with words. That’s it.”
He continued, “I’m disappointed in myself by letting it escalate to what it did and that’s why I’m apologetic to it. The truth of the matter is, I should have never put myself in that position because that s—t could have got ugly,” referencing rapper Nipsey Hussle’s death as an extreme of how bad it could have gotten.
Newton then apologized to TJ, Steph, their organization, his organization, and anybody else affected, stating that there was “no excuse” for his actions that day.
“To every high school player, to every single person I’ve influenced and to every single athlete, use my situation as a way to understand that in one moment and one decision, your life can change just like that. I let my emotions get the best of me and it should not have been called for,” said the 34-year-old. “Simple … and with that I apologize…”
Cam Newton apologizes for the fight at last weekend’s We Ball 7v7 tournament.
— Sheena Quick (@Sheena_Marie3) March 1, 2024
“There’s no excuse, it’s really not.” pic.twitter.com/ECkjyjUFfs
Perhaps Wayans tapping in is the levity needed around the entire situation.
He said in his caption that he was sharing his “opinion” based on only what he saw in the video without knowing the details of the squabble.
“This was when I first heard about the incident. So no facts, just my initial thoughts. So excuse the timelines and facts… I ain’t the news,” he wrote on March 5. “Go on with your day.”
He also continued to joke by saying that the athlete tried to do something nice for the kids, but then beat up the “good man” because he was wearing “bad hats.”
“Who’s next, Santa?” he mockingly asked. “You’re gonna jump that n—ga and take his toys?”
As the youngest brother of the legendary Wayans family, he begged for the “negativity” to stop, and blamed it on Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars ceremony, ending the clip with a positive message: “You got stop this nonsense. Let’s get it y’all. Positivity. Happiness.”
Fans flooded his comment section cracking up at his silliness.
“A white skinny belt!!! IYKYK RIP POPS,” one person wrote referencing his hit WB sitcom “The Wayans Brothers.” “Blaming it on will is hilarious,” someone else said.
Most of the comments included laughing emojis, but quite a few pointed out that the people who jumped Newton were not kids but adults, a fact that the native New Yorker didn’t know when he made the video.
Somehow, the attackers being grown made the bit even more funny to some of his 6.6 million followers.
“The gag is they wasn’t kids, the were some grown 5 ft 3 in men, which makes it funnier,” one person wrote, possibly laughing as he or she typed.
