Tua Tagovailoa fires back at Ryan Clark over offseason workout comments
We think we can call this Ryan Clark-Tua Tagovailoa verbal situation a full-blown feud. The retired guy insinuated the current player was fat. Then the quarterback challenged the old DB to a fight.
It sounds like some on-field trash talking, except it was coming from the ESPN studio and from the podium at Miami Dolphins headquarters on Don Shula Drive.
Here’s how it started. On Tuesday, Ryan Clark and the rest of the NFL LIve panel was discussing Tua Tagovailoa. The Dolphins quarterback had well-publicized issues with concussions last season, missing four games. In the off season, Tagovailoa studied martial arts to better learn how to fall. And he gained some weight to withstand the hits from all those blitzing edge rushers.
Maybe he was joking, but Clark remarked that Tagovailoa “might have spent a lot of time at the tattoo table. He was not at the dinner table eating what the fitness trainer had advised. He looks heavy. (And) He is thick.” Clark also said Tua’s bottom looks like that of a woman who works at a prominent gentlemen’s club in Atlanta.
Of course reporters had to ask Tua Tagovailoa about Ryan Clark
It’s getting to be the dog days of training camp, with the start of the regular season still more than two weeks away. So a reporter asked Tua about Clark’s comments. why not? It’s new, fresh copy!
“Ryan’s been out of the league for some time, so, I don’t know,” Tagovailoa said. “It’s a little weird when other people are talking about other people, when they’re not that person.”
He kept on the weirdness of it all. “It’s just a little weird. My background, is I come from a Samoan family. Respect is everything. It does get to a point where, Hey, a little easy on that buddy. “I think we’re tough-minded people. And if we need to get scrappy, we can get scrappy too. Just saying.”
Too much for Tua? Is it an overreaction by Clark? Tagovailoa says he’s proud of the muscle he added to his body. “I mean I think we all worked hard throughout the offseason,” he said. “I’m not somebody to talk about myself the entire time, but it takes a lot. You think I wanted to build all this muscle?
“To some extent, I wanted to be a little lighter,” the quarterback said. “There’s a mixture of things that people don’t understand, that people don’t know about or talk about that go on behind the scenes.
“I’d appreciate it if you kept my name out your mouth. That’s what I’d say.”