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Antonio Brown’s ex-chef, Steven Ruiz joins Fred Roggin, Rodney Peete and Eric Dickerson today and talked about his claim that Antonio Brown has been lying about his vaccination status. Ruiz mentions that Brown requested that Ruiz try to acquire a fraudulent vaccination card for him, a former Buccaneers player was selling vaccination cards to players on the team, and that the NFL is actively trying to sweep the story under the rug.
Fred Roggin:“Get us to the story about the vaccination card, if he [Antonio Brown] is vaccinated or if he’s not vaccinated, because you were really at the center of that.”
Steven Ruiz: “At the end of the day he’s not [vaccinated.] When he was here in LA, him and his girlfriend were asking me to get him the vaccine card. I tried my best, I really had no idea who to contact when he was asking me to get them for him. The week prior before I left to Tampa I had asked him ‘do you need the vax card?’ and he was like ‘no, got it covered.’ When I arrived to Tampa I had asked him again and he was like ‘yeah we’re good, I got it covered.’ He had purchased it from another player on the team, he said that everything was ‘good’ and that he ‘took care of it.’ Some of the players came over right before training camp and produced the cards and gave it to him.”
Roggin:“You’re saying that AB was not vaccinated and he got a fake card from someone on the team?”
Ruiz: “Yeah, exactly, he got a card from another player on the team. I looked up the serial number on the card and it’s three and half hours north of Tampa where he allegedly got the vaccine. The question is, if he really was vaccinated this could have been brought to light and just proven the day that the story broke. They could have just said ‘look at the serial number, look it up, this is where he was.’ We all know, why would AB drive three and a half hours north to a county in the middle of nowhere Florida to get a vaccine, when it was available at the Buccaneers’ facility?”’
Roggin:“You also said that one of the payers on the team was in essence supplying guys fake cards?”
Ruiz: “Correct, he had mentioned a couple of guys' names, I think his name was ‘Franklin’ but I’m not really sure, but it was one of the other players who was there.”
Roggin:“So one of the players was selling fake vaccination cards to the players?”
Ruiz: “From what AB told me, yeah… I know it was a topic that the players were trying to get these cards to be 'fully vaxxed’ to the public, but that wasn’t the case at all.”
“Sure, you could maybe say it’s sorta ‘revenge’, it’s not really about the money. At the end it’s more of a public safety issue, that these players are flying around the country pretending to be vaxxed and it’s not right.”
“His attorney [Antonio Brown's] tried calling me before the story broke and they were trying to offer me money, and they were trying to pay me off to stay quiet because they had gotten word that I had reached out to the Buccaneers franchise and made them aware that there was somebody who was unvaxxed on the team, and his attorney had called me and said that they were trying to keep quiet and they were trying to offer me the money."
“I looked up his [Antonio Brown's] serial number because the Bucs are trying to discredit me. Jay Glazer is saying that everything is fabricated, that I’m lying, and all of this stuff, but honestly, if I was, they would have proved it already, and I don’t think the NFL or anyone really wants to touch this. They’re trying to bury it.”
“The NFL has not reached out to me. I’m pretty surprised, I thought they said they would do their due diligence, and that they would cover the matter, but if he was vaxxed this probably would have been done and over with in a day."
Listen to the conversation.
Photo: Getty Images