Ryan Whitney has broken his silence on Team Red’s Internet Invitational finale loss. The Spittin’ Chiclets host posted a video breaking down the final match the day after it aired.
“Salim the Dream, he turned into a nightmare,” Whitney said. “The ending was just a complete disgrace.”
Fat Perez, Riggs and Bobby Ray beat Whitney, Big John and Salim “The Dream” Sirur 5&3 at Payne’s Valley. Each winner took home about $1.33 million of the $4 million purse.
Whitney credited the winners first. “FP is a legit stick, played incredible,” he said. “Riggs played well. I mean, he was so annoying in the cart. But he played his balls off, and he deserved to win. All of them deserved to win.”
He said Salim has apologized to him repeatedly. “He’s texted me about 10 times since August, just apologized, and he hasn’t drank. Good for him,” Whitney said. “He obviously had an issue. The whole world’s gonna see it now, but good for him.”
Whitney said Team Red wouldn’t have reached the final without Salim. “He made this incredible putt for double bogey. We don’t get to the finals without him,” he said. “It just so happened in the finals, he wasn’t physically or mentally even there. He doesn’t remember one thing.”
RELATED: Salim Apologizes for Drunk Internet Invitational Finale: ‘I Prioritized Drinking Over the Match’
He also said the broadcast went easy on Salim. “The editors made Salim look as good as humanly possible in that final match,” Whitney said. “If you were there, there were 7,000 hugs that they didn’t show.”
Whitney said there was no stopping the drinking. “He’s a Nelk boy. There was no chance of curtailing the drinking,” he said. “I tried to get him to eat. He wasn’t gonna eat. He was a complete mess.”
He estimated Salim had about 20 shots of tequila that day. “Probably 14 to 15 before 1 o’clock when we teed off,” Whitney said.
Team Red’s plan was to keep the driver out of Salim’s hands. Whitney said Big John is “a legit plus two or three handicap,” so the goal was to get Salim’s tee shot in the fairway and let Big John take it from there.
It didn’t work. On the third hole, Salim agreed to hit 4-iron. “I walked back to my cart, I turn around and he’s waggling driver over the ball,” Whitney said. “Immediately snap hooks it.”
The same thing happened on the sixth hole after Salim agreed to hit 8-iron. “I guess that’s on me,” Whitney said. “I gotta take the driver physically out of his hand, hand him the 8-iron, but we weren’t dealing with a rational human at this point.”
“This was a walking corpse that loved to hug people,” he said. “It was a corpse that hugs.”
On the ninth hole, Whitney passed along a tip from Kevin Kisner to move the ball back in his stance. “He said, ‘I like it in front of my stance, dog,'” Whitney said. “That one went OB as well. So that’s three tee balls, three holes lost, three out-of-bounds tee balls.”
Whitney admitted his patience was tested. “A couple points, I wanted to take his driver, snap it and stab him,” he said. “But a couple deep breaths, let patience kind of prevail.”
He doesn’t regret staying calm. “For anyone who’s ever been around somebody loaded, what is snapping on them do? It only kind of escalates things,” Whitney said. “He was a vibes guy. He needed to have positivity, love and hugs.”
Whitney also took some blame for the loss. He said he had to make his putt on the 14th hole, and that Salim’s tee shot on 15 went out of bounds too.
One moment summed up the day for him. After Whitney left a birdie putt short, Salim told him it was a great putt. “I’m like, no, Salim, we’re down a hundred and I’m not even getting the putt to the hole,” Whitney said. “That’s not a great putt. But give me a hug.”
He compared the finale to the endings of Game of Thrones and The Sopranos. “Everyone’s looking for a finale like last year where it comes down to 18, and we got the hug monster,” Whitney said. “It sucks for the viewers. It sucked for him. It sucked for Big John and myself.”
Whitney then turned to Sam Heung Min, who called the Episode 4 penalty on Big John and later posted a video calling his critics “podcast muppets.” Whitney believes he was one of the targets.
“Maybe one of the most nonsensical rants slash videos I’ve ever seen,” Whitney said. “He called us retired f—s. I’m sorry for retiring, Sam. I couldn’t get any more jobs playing hockey.”
In his video, Heung Min said the tournament was disrespectful to the players after he and Claire were late to a tee time. Whitney pointed out that travel, food, drinks and lodging are all paid for at a world-class resort, with $1.3 million on the line. “The disrespect, oh my God, Sam,” he said.
Whitney also stood by his take on the Big John penalty. “Big John’s ball didn’t move. Buddy, it didn’t move,” he said. “We saw the replay 500 times. It was a soft-ass call.”
Whitney still called the Internet Invitational an amazing event. Dave Portnoy has since said Salim will not play in 2027. “Be back next year,” Whitney said. “We’ll see what happens.”
