He Challenges the WNBA to a $10 MILLION Showdown.. Their Response_

Clay Travis is putting $10 MILLION of his own money on the line for one extraordinary basketball game: the WNBA champions against a state-champion high school boys team.

The OutKick founder joins Erin Molan to explain why he issued the challenge, why boys’ teams immediately volunteered, and why—at the time of this interview—he says no WNBA franchise had agreed to play.

Clay reveals how the challenge exploded across X with more than 10 million impressions, what his wife thought when he offered up the money, and why he believes staging the game on pay-per-view—with proceeds going to charity—could finally settle one of the biggest arguments in sports.

Erin also presses Clay on the controversy surrounding Indiana Fever teammates Sophie Cunningham and Caitlin Clark. Should Caitlin Clark have publicly backed Sophie after Sophie repeatedly stood up for her? Or was Caitlin right to stay out of a divisive debate and focus only on basketball?

Clay explains why he believes the WNBA—not individual athletes and coaches—must establish clear eligibility rules, and why players like Caitlin Clark should never have been placed in this position.

The video opens with Donald Trump weighing in on the wider controversy, followed by Caitlin Clark’s press conference response before Erin sits down with Clay Travis.

Who wins: the WNBA champions or a championship high school boys team?

And did Caitlin Clark handle the Sophie Cunningham question correctly?

Let me know in the comments, share this interview with a sports fan, and SUBSCRIBE to The Erin Molan Show for more fearless conversations about sports, politics, culture and the stories everyone is talking about.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Donald Trump weighs in on the controversy
00:50 Caitlin Clark responds to the Sophie Cunningham question
01:11 Erin introduces the $10 million WNBA challenge
01:35 Clay Travis joins Erin Molan
02:02 Why Clay put $10 million on the line
03:39 WNBA champions vs. high school boys
04:43 Boys’ teams volunteer—but the WNBA stays silent
04:58 Clay’s pay-per-view plan for charity
05:37 What Clay’s wife thinks about the challenge
05:58 The post explodes past 10 million impressions
06:36 Why the challenge broke through
07:27 Clay’s age-division comparison
08:26 Why women’s sports require separate competition
08:49 Where Clay draws the line
10:53 Clay’s identity and race comparison
11:54 Should Caitlin Clark have backed Sophie Cunningham?
12:25 Why the WNBA must establish the rules
12:51 Clay explains Caitlin Clark’s decision
13:28 How the issue became political

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
And I'll tell you what, if I were ever, I'd be.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
The greatest woman's basketball coach of it. Because I don't
like Lebron James. I like Michael Jordan much better, but I.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
But I'd go up to Lebron James.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
It doesn't matter. I say, Lebron, did you ever have
any desire to be a woman?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Because what I'd love you to do is star on.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
My team that I'm building up. I will have the
greatest team in history. They'll never lose. Nobody who will
come within seventy points of this team. Now we have
to change that, and we have to make it okay
to talk about it. You know, the young lady I
was talking about is afraid to talk about it.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
I think for us, like you know, it's not really discussial.
We really have our locker room. I think it's for
leagues and the governing bodies to work with their athletes
to find solutions. But our focus is on basketball and
that's what we talk about and how we can get wins.
And obviously we didn't do that tonight, so in a
fine area to improve in that way.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Do you have any reaction to you the.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
I understandswer clear.

Speaker 5 (01:12):
Imagine a championship high school boys team playing against a
WNBA franchise.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Who wins the girls or the boys.

Speaker 5 (01:29):
Clay Travis is putting up ten million dollars to try
and make that happen. I talk to him now about
this issue about Sophie Cunningham, about Caitlin Clark electing not
to speak out, and about whether or.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Not he thinks the boys would win or the girls.

Speaker 5 (01:51):
Let me know, watch, Clay Travis, thank you so so
much for joining me here on the Aaron Mollin Show.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
It's such a pleasure to have you on.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Thank you.

Speaker 6 (02:01):
It's good to see you at mar A Lago a
while back, and thank you for trying to fight some
battles for sanity all over the place.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
So happy to be on with you.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Bless you. I'm so glad you name checked that.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
I suspect it's a more regular occurrence for you than
it was for me. But that was a certain highlight
sitting next to you my friends, second only to sitting
next year. It was a great dinner. Talk to me
about ten million dollars. Not many people in our position
actually put money where their mouth is.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
You do.

Speaker 6 (02:31):
Yeah, Look, one of the advantages of having a decent
amount of financial security. Now is when I see truly
absurd stories out there, my natural inclination when I see
absurdity is to raise the level of absurdity. I don't
know what that says about me, but look, we can
sit around debating chromosomes, and we can debate overall amount

(02:56):
of muscle on bodies and testosterone levels and estrogen and
everything else till we're blue in the face. But when
I hear WNBA coaches say, well, we would welcome men
who identify as women into the WNBA, my natural reaction is, well,
let's just do it, because I do think on some

(03:17):
level sometimes people need to actually see what happens when
the logic of their arguments is followed. So I just
picked it right up and I said, look, a couple
of things. One, I want a WNBA franchise. I would
like to buy one my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
We don't have a team here.

Speaker 6 (03:37):
I think if we had the most inclusive, the most welcoming,
the most open of all teams in the WNBA, I
would only hire men pretending to be women for my franchise,
for my team, for my front office, and as a result.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
I believe we would Yeah, we would never.

Speaker 6 (03:59):
We would never lose a single game so long as
the rules allowed men to play in women's sports. So
I put that out there, and then on top of that, look,
I think most people would recognize the WNBA champion against
the NBA would be absurd.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
The WNBA champion against.

Speaker 6 (04:18):
State college championship level team in America would be absurd.
So I went to boys high school team, state champion
team of my choice that I would put ten million
dollars on the line. The WNBA players regularly complain that
they are being underpaid relative to their talents. This would
be the single most lucrative basketball game one game ever

(04:41):
played in the history of the sport. Ten million dollars
of my own money on the line for whomever ends
up winning this game. Ton of boys high school basketball
teams and their coaches have already reached out. They say, hey, Clay,
you know, our heads are up, we're ready, We're ready
to sign up for this game. O WNBA has remained silent.

(05:02):
I think that's because deep down, all of these women
and the people who run the league know that the boys,
these are not men, These are boys. Teenage boys would
destroy them and dominate them. I said, we put it
on pay per view. All the proceeds would go to charity.
It would be probably the most watched w NBA game
in the history of mankind.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
And I think they would lose.

Speaker 6 (05:24):
And again, I think this is about following the logic
of the argument to its extension and ratcheting up the
level of absurdity to meet.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
To me, what is an absurd argument?

Speaker 5 (05:36):
By them, it is completely absurd, And I think that's
a brilliant idea. And I would probably not pay ten
million because I'm not capable of it.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
But I would pay an enormous amount of money to
say that.

Speaker 5 (05:48):
Can I just side note, Clay, Is there anything that
I could do that would interest you for ten million bucks?

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Look? I think, wait, yeah, no, I was gonna say.

Speaker 6 (06:00):
My wife sometimes it gets mad when I do public
statements like this, because she's like, oh my god, you
know you're outrageous because you're drawing. But I do think
you know this, in this day and age in which
we live, it's hard to cut through the noise. That
tweet by itself now has over ten million impressions, over

(06:22):
one hundred thousand likes just on Twitter. It's echoed all
through TikTok, It's echoed all through Instagram. Twitter is my
preferred medium because I like to talk more than I
I mean, it's a type I like to write and
talk more than I like to make videos and things
like that. So it has but it has echoed through,
and I do think in the marketplace of ideas, it

(06:43):
has resonated in a way and led conversation in a
way that sometimes a more logical response would not have
have characterized or captured that much attention.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
I think it's spot on, and I think the way
in which people will frame it in their mind that
there should be a stark realization.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
I mean, it should have pre existed what you've done.

Speaker 5 (07:04):
But for those where it doesn't, it actually makes you
think very rationally about it, doesn't it. And the thing,
you know, we're hearing coaches saying, well, I'm just not
privy to the science.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
You're a blow or you're a chick.

Speaker 5 (07:17):
You don't need a degree in physics or biology to
understand that. I'm looking at this player in France, this
second tier player in France, really like even at that level,
and look not much chop really, but yards ahead of
any other woman on those teams. How does not even
looking at that a second tier game in France say

(07:39):
to most people with half a brain, this is not
a fair playing field.

Speaker 6 (07:46):
Yeah, look, I think you can take it outside of
sport or sorry sex. I coached my three boys in
every sport basketball, football, soccer, baseball.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
If you can play at my boys have played it.
When I had a.

Speaker 6 (08:02):
Twelve U team, you have to show up with birth
certificates to prove how old your boys are. If someone
had shown up with a sixteen year old, that sixteen
year old would.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Dominate the league.

Speaker 6 (08:14):
But every parent would immediately say, well, this is unacceptable.
We have age restrictions for a reason. We have weight
restrictions for a reason. In combat sports. Right when it
comes to different classifications of high schools, a big high
school competes at a different level than.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
A small school would.

Speaker 6 (08:32):
All these things are rational, which are the fabric of competition.
I would argue the single most important distinction in all
of sport is gender. Men are bigger, stronger, faster than women.
This isn't complicated. It doesn't mean that that women's sports
shouldn't be played. But if we had unisex sports, there

(08:53):
would be no women, because the men would all have
the spots, and all of these people who say, well,
it's not that big of a deal, Clay, you'll see
him in the mentions, there's not that many of them.
Then just end it, right, If it's not that big
of a deal, why do we need to fight? And
the reason we need to fight, Aaron, is because ultimately

(09:13):
this is the foundation of what is a house of
cards argument because you and I you're younger than me.
But when it wasn't very long ago, it wasn't very
long ago that if a man wanted to dress up
as a woman, he did that he was a drag queen,
and everybody recognized it was not actually a woman. But

(09:34):
if it made him happier, I don't have any problem
with it. But as soon as you take the next
step and say to me, no, no, no, you have
to accept that this is really a man, then you're
asking me to lie about something I know to be
untrue and that I will not do. And that's where
this whole thing starts to collapse, because they insist that

(09:57):
these are actual women, like you're a woman, or just
like I'm a man. I've been in the delivery room
three times. Doctors don't get it wrong. You know that's
the argument they make. Well, sometimes doctors get gender wrong.
Now you all love a baby, You're like, oh, he's
got a penis. Approp pretty common that he's a boy,
or there's a vagina. I feel pretty good as a girl.
Remember kindergarten cop back in the day. I mean, this

(10:19):
is just bonkers where we've ended up.

Speaker 5 (10:21):
I don't know if you've seen the Simpsons episode where
Homer is rushing Marge to hospital to give birth or something,
and then she's giving birth and he's gone through drive
through and the doctors he's saying.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
It's a girl, but she's got a penis.

Speaker 5 (10:34):
And it's a very funny clip, and they're going to
play it for you now because it actually just demonstrates
the insanity of this. A couple more things really quickly, Clay,
you mentioned if a sixteen year old had come to
enroll in, say your twelve year old Sons under twelve's
basketball team, would then post rejection of that application, which

(10:54):
is what anyone would do because that's the obvious would
there have been a campaign of people saying, this child's
not being included, this is discrimination.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
You're a bigot.

Speaker 5 (11:04):
In fact, you're also a racist, and let's just throw
it in that you're islamophobic.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Would to weaponize it? No?

Speaker 6 (11:12):
No, yeah, And look, I mean the easy example on
this would be transage is not a thing. But for
the left right now, if I suddenly am a bearded man,
if I suddenly said, hey, I am a black woman,
you am, the left would have to accept my femaleness,
but it would be racist for me to identify as

(11:33):
a black woman.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
So race is not selectable.

Speaker 6 (11:37):
In fact, it is unacceptable, and you are a racist
if you try to identify as a race. You are
not but the gender, which I think most people out
there would argue and agree with Aaron.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
It's way easier to pretend.

Speaker 6 (11:51):
To be a different race than it is to be
a different gender.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
And in fact, we know this all the time.

Speaker 6 (11:56):
Sometimes people don't know what race they are because they're
ethnicity is actually different when they do the DNA test
than they thought that it might have been before.

Speaker 5 (12:06):
So you get canceled for cultural appropriation, but you're boosted
for putting a wig on if you're a bloke.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Like, how does that make sense? It doesn't.

Speaker 5 (12:15):
I need to get your thoughts finally, on Sophie Cunningham
and Kaitlyn Clark had the opportunity at a press conference,
and I get it. I know that, I know what
it's like to be annihilated. I know what it's like
to be like I know whatever I say blah blah
blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
But there's also.

Speaker 5 (12:30):
Doing what's right, and there's also backing up a teammate
who has gone to extraordinary lengths to publicly back you
and physically on the court defend you. What are your
thoughts on Caitlyn Clark having the opportunity to do that
and not taking it.

Speaker 6 (12:44):
The WNBA should have taken this responsibility out of all
coaches and players by simply saying, as the Women's Tennis
Association did, as the NCAA for college now has done,
and as as the Olympics have done, we are going
to make gender tests a part of being a female athlete,

(13:06):
and so it's not the responsibility of individual competitors to
set the overall auspices of competition. They have not done
that within that construct. Do I personally wish Caitlin Clark
had spoken out and endorsed what Sophie Cunningham said. Yes,
but I also understand why Caitlin Clark did not. During
the twenty twenty four election, people said, are you voting
for Kamala or Trump? She said, I'm not going to

(13:27):
let you know, right, That's not my job. She is
trying to follow the Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant
era of major sports stars in America, where nobody cares
about your politics.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
They just want to see you be excellent.

Speaker 6 (13:40):
And so I think she's actually been somewhat consistent in
trying to stay out of the political arena and just say, look,
I want to play.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
This is the this should be. This is not a
political bloody issue.

Speaker 6 (13:54):
That's yes, it shouldn't be at all, but the left
has adopted it.

Speaker 5 (13:57):
They'll make it into exactly right, exactly right. You amazing Claig.
Thank you so so much for joining us here. Really
appreciate everything you'd do.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Great to have met you Erin. Keep up the good
work and thanks for having me