Shane Gillis gives his opening monologue as the host of the 2025 ESPYS.

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[Music] Please welcome your host, Shane Gillis. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hello. Uh, welcome to the 2025 SPS. I’m so excited to be here in front of so many amazing athletes. Uh, world champion Freddy Freeman is here. Give it up for Freddy. Yeah. WNBA legend Deanna Terasi is here. Give it up for her. My bad on that. SGA is here. Give it up for SGA. Hell yeah, bro. And now everybody sitting around him is in foul trouble. Megan Rapino could not make it tonight. Nice. No, we’re going to pretend she’s a good time. All right. Uh John Jones and Nate Diaz are here. Uh I actually Yeah. Hell yeah. Uh I actually I had a couple drinks with those guys last night at the hotel and it was uh it was terrifying. Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn. The last time he staged a fight in DC, Mike Pence almost died. All right, you don’t have to do that. It was fine. I didn’t write it. Uh, actually, there was supposed to be an Epstein joke here, but I guess it got deleted. Must have uh probably deleted itself, right? probably never existed. Actually, let’s move on as a country and ignore that. Uh, the New York Knicks had a great season. Uh, yeah. Hell yeah. Carl Anthony Towns is here. Hey girl. Max Crosby is here. Max, I hope you had a good Junth, brother. Why guy’s weird? Four-time WNBA all-star Britney Hicks is here. Give it up for Britney, everybody. I’m uh I’m joking around. That’s my friend’s wife. I knew none of you knew WNBA players. That’s crazy. You clap for that. Uh Simone Biles is here. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s not bad. Uh Simone Biles is 4 foot eight and has seven gold medals. She’s short and has a lot of gold. When she’s not competing, she leads a quiet life at the base of a rainbow. It’s a leprechaun joke. If you tell Simone a riddle and she can’t answer it, she has to give you all of her gold medals. That was the best one. Uh Joe Rogan actually wanted me to be here to host this award show so that I could capture Adam Silver because Joe thinks he’s an alien. And Donald Trump want to be wanted me to be here to capture Juan Sodto for the same reason. It’s an alien joke. What? What you boot up there, dude? Shut up. Aaron Rogers did not take the vaccine because he predicted it would be bad for him and then he joined the New York Jets. So maybe he wasn’t right about everything. Uh Shador Sanders had his jersey number retired at Colorado this year and people are saying it’s because of nepotism because of his father and it’s not. It’s because he went 13 and 12 over his career and he almost won the Alamo Bowl. Definitely not nepotism, right? All right. It’s a big year for the WNBA. I love Caitlyn Clark. Uh Kate Yeah. Hell yeah. Kaitlin Clark. She and I have a lot in common. We’re both whites from the Midwest who have nailed a bunch of threes. All right, there you go. Lighten up a little. This is not serious. We’ll see about this one. Uh, when Caitlyn Clark retires from the WNBA, she’s going to work at a Waffle House so she can continue doing what she loves most, fist fighting black women. [Applause] Hell yeah. Who yell? Drewi, thank you, bro. Oh, John Jones. One of you nut jobs over there. Hell yeah. Uh, Show Otani couldn’t make it tonight. Man, I hope his interpreter didn’t bet that he was going to be here. Show is a once in a generation talent. No one’s been able to do what he does at so many positions. Pitcher, hitter, and bookie. A bookie is what Bill Bich reads to his girlfriend before bedtime. [Applause] They do. They read uh The Very Horny Caterpillar. The little engine that could but needed a pill first. And of course the classic goodn night boobs. That was my favorite one. Uh, also I’m not trashing Bill Bich. First off, he’s 73 years old. He’s dating a hot 24 year old and people are criticizing him. What happened to this country? We used to be a great country. He won six Super Bowls. Yeah, he’s dating a hot 24y old. Maybe if you guys won six Super Bowls, you wouldn’t be sitting next to a fat, ugly dog wife. They let me do it. I don’t This is Disney. They allowed that. Uh here I’m going to tell you a story. I was at uh Yeah, they we should have taken that out. Uh I had doubts going into that. That didn’t work all week. Uh actually, it was a good year for me in sports. I I went to Notre Dame, went to the national title. I was at the Yeah, go Irish. I was at the uh I was at the Eagles g the Super Bowl when they won and it was not Yeah. Go Birds. Yeah. Go Birds. Yeah. But I was down there. I’m just gonna tell you a story real quick. It’s not a good joke. I was uh it was it was halftime of the game and we looked up. You could see Donald Trump. He was sitting at at at in the suite like at the 50 yard line. You couldn’t see him, but you could see like his silhouette. You know what I mean? It was just Also, can we stop pretending Donald Trump knows ball? It’s like a weird thing where they’re like, “Man, he loves sport. He doesn’t know anything about sports. Every time a team comes and visits the White House, he’s like, “And you must be the guy who catches.” It’s like, “Look at these guys. Big guys, black guys.” And that’s just when the New York Liberty visited. They didn’t visit. That’s just a joke. But but it was halftime and we looked up and we saw we saw Trump. I was with my buddy and I was like we should just sneak up there and try to meet him and we did. We got into his suite which turns out it’s pretty easy to get access to Donald Trump which probably why he keeps getting shot all the time. We just got right in there. But we’re in there. He doesn’t know who I am but there’s a line of people and he’s just shaking hands with everybody and I was at the end of the line. But also I took a picture with him and I posted it and people got upset about that. What the hell? He’s the president. If Osama bin Laden was in the suite, I would have been like, “Yeah, you’re crazy.” All right. But he’s shaking hands with everybody. It’s very funny. Trump does this thing whenever he meets somebody for the first time, even if he doesn’t know him, gives him like a crazy compliment. It’s kind of nice. Like he got to the guy next to me and he was like, “Look at you. You’re beautiful.” And then he got to me and he was like, “Look at you. You’re huge.” And I was like, “Thank you, Mr. President.” But he shook my hand. He stood next to me. So I’m just, you know, I was at the end of the line, so there’s no one else for him to shake hands with. So he’s just standing next to I got to hear him breathe for like a minute, just standing next to me just and then his daughter Ivanka walked over to us, which by the way, so hot. She walked over and I was it was halftime of the Super Bowl. I was hammered. I was like, “Hello, your dad just said I was huge.” So now it’s me, Trump, and Ivanka. They’re not talking to me obviously, but I can over hear what they’re saying. And Trump goes, “Ivanka, how would you like to meet the president of soccer?” And sure enough, the president of FIFA soccer was also in the suite with us. He was getting like nachos. And Donald Trump just looks at him and goes, “Ew.” And the guy put his plate down and walked straight to us. And then Donald Trump didn’t even look at him. He just kept talking to his daughter and he goes, “This is the president of soccer.” and they gave us the World Cup and they did that because of me. And then he walked out of the room. It was just me and the president of FIFA looking at each other like that was crazy. All right, that was a dumb thing to say. Uh, it was crazy. That was crazy being in that room. It’s crazy to be in this room with so many legends. You guys are awesome. Uh, Oscar Robertson, that’s awesome. Sugar Ray Leonard’s here. Hell yeah. Sugar Ray, you’re the man. But what? In 10 years, Jake Paul is gonna try to knock you out. So, take it easy. Uh, there’s one thing I want to say before I get out of here, and this is a dumb joke. You guys aren’t going to like it, but it was uh it’s just a Nor McDonald joke that I loved when he hosted the ESPs, and I’m going to do it now. Uh, Travis Hunter won the won the Heisman Trophy this year. He’s the first defensive player since Charles Woodson to win the Heisman. Congratulations, Travis Hunter. Winning the Heisman, that’s something they can never take away from you unless you kill your wife and a waiter. in which case they can take that away from you. Well, see a lot of you don’t like me and that’s okay.

30 Comments

  1. The crowd is afraid to be caught laughing on tv. They live in fear of being themselves because they don't know who they are. Pathetic.

  2. Shane did a really good job of getting a large portion of the crowd to vibe with him halfway through the video and throughout the rest of it. Theres alot of social division and Shane is a somewhat poliarzing figure. So for him to get up in this stage to begin with was not his usual crowd and it shows with his nervousness In the beginning. But he does a really good job at breaking down the barriers. After the Caitlyn Clark joke at 4:10 he does out on a stretch and tells the crowd to "lighten up a little bit". And once he did that the crowd started vibing alot more.

  3. When Shane said he's gonna do a Norm Macdonald joke, I already new it's gonna be this one! They hated it when Norm said it, too…many years ago 😂😂😂

  4. Shane not afraid to confront differences in people and cultures, he jokes about everything and everyone and not in a malicious manner at all. which I think actually helps unite us as a diverse country

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