Lil Wayne and commentator Skip Bayless share their unlikely friendship: ‘There is no man on earth I would rather talk to about sports or life than this man’

The lifelong friends are up about their long-lasting careers, the Taylor Swift influence, and their current lives in an interview with PEOPLE.

On a Friday morning in the middle of October, Skip Bayless has just wrapped up filming his Undisputed segment for Fox Sports 1. Like he does every Friday since the end of August, he was joined on the program by his friend Lil Wayne for a sports argument part that demonstrated their easygoing connection.

Following their reunion with PEOPLE via Zoom, it is evident how close the 71-year-old sports commentator and 41-year-old rapper have become off-air friends in the fifteen years since they first crossed paths when Wayne was invited to appear as a guest on Bayless’s former ESPN program First Take.”Right away he caught my ear because in our pre-show meeting, we talked about Steph Curry and Blake Griffin, who were then about to be drafted by the NBA,” Bayless relates. “When he said that he thought Steph was superior than Blake, it pleasantly surprised me. I had always felt this way, and ESPN employees thought I was crаzy. “This man really knows sports,” I said.