By Katherine Tinsley
10:44am PST, Feb 11, 2025
"If I'm married and my wife is going to join trolling her ex, go back to his a–, 'cause clearly you don't belong with me," Smith said on the show.
"What you worried about him for and you're with me? Bye. Bye," he added.
Retired NFL star
Ryan Clark noted that the mom-of-two is still living a lavish lifestyle, despite her history with
Drake.
"If you were with
Serena Williams, you're going to be a kept man anyways. Don't start that," Clark stated.
Williams' husband, Alexis Ohanian, didn't seem bothered by his wife's performance. In fact, he explained the significance of his wife participating in the show.
"Some of y'all have no idea how criticized Serena was for this same dance at Wimbledon 13 years ago and it shows," the tech entrepreneur said on X, formerly known as Twitter. "This is bigger than the music."
Ohanian's followers quickly rushed to the athlete's defense.
"What I find hilarious is the idiots who assumed she was taking a dig at
Drake by being there or it was motivated by such," one user noted, as Williams and Lamar are from the same hometown.
"Uh. She's from Compton, the same as Kendrick, and they are friends," the person added. "It's the SB, she's an elite athlete, and who wouldn't want to represent on stage for a bit!"
In an X post, Williams joked about her dance.
"Man I did not crip-walk like that at Wimbledon," Williams said in a backstage video. "Oh, I would've been fined," she said before adding, "It was all love."
Despite her enthusiasm, some viewers noted that Williams' half-sibling
Yetunde was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Compton, Calif., and the two-step is associated with the West Coast gang The Crips.
"
Serena Williams was the extra sauce last night. She's lost a sister to gang violence in a drive-by shooting, but she's crip-walking on Kendrick's set last night," writer
Jason Whitlock said in a social media post.
