Bad blood between brothers has been a known phenomenon since the beginning of time. Jason and Travis Kelce, for example, are both NFL stars with storied careers in the league and today have a popular podcast together, but that doesn't mean they haven't butted heads, especially while they were growing up.
Jason, who retired from the Philadelphia Eagles earlier this year, told the story of his recent physical altercation with Travis on Shaquille O'Neal's show Big PodcastIt was then that he realized that Travis, although young, was more than capable of defeating him.
“I was a junior in high school and Trav was a freshman and he was starting to get taller than me,” Jason recalled. “He was always more athletic, but I was ahead of him [in age]”
Shaq said Travis started “feeling himself” when he hit puberty, and Jason confirmed that.
“He’s feeling it, and I get mad at him for feeling it,” he said. They were playing basketball in their backyard, he said, and Travis was making one basket after another. “I can’t do anything to stop it, so of course I resort to fouling him—that’s the only way I know how to stop it—and he’s like, ‘This is bullshit. This is a foul.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t see any refs here. I don’t see anyone calling this.’”
“He takes the ball and throws it to me, [and] “He comes into the house,” Jason recalled, and it immediately infuriated him.
“I go in, grab him by the shoulder and punch him,” he continued. “Listen, we used to fight all the time. This was the second time I ever punched him. I don't know how he got so worked up. I punched him in the face. And every time before that he would cry or whatever.”
What happened next surprised Jason, to say the least. “He took this punch, lifted me off my feet and slammed me onto the kitchen floor so hard the oven fell off its shelf,” he said. “I got up, [and] “We're in a full-on fistfight. My dad comes up behind me to break me up, grabs me, Trav pushes me onto my dad, and the only thing that stopped the fight was my dad yelling, 'Oh, my ribs!' and we thought we hurt him, so we came to.”
“This was our last fight,” he concluded.
Clearly, the two brothers are far behind their youthful feuds, as they have publicly supported each other throughout their NFL careers and now host the popular weekly podcast New Heights.