Online users are furious with NFL player Jonathan Owens for saying that he is “the catch” to his wife Simone Biles, the world’s most decorated gymnast.
Now fans are urging the gymnast to “reassess” her relationship with the Chicago Bears defensive back and others suggest he made the “cringe and embarrassing” comments to “humble her.”
“He would say I slid into his DMs,” Biles told WSJ. Magazine in July 2021.
“I saw him, and I was like, ‘Oh, he’s pretty cute,’ so I said hi…and then I saw that he was in the Houston area, so we started chatting a little bit, and then we went to hang out a week or two later.”
Sharing his own version of their meeting, Owens spoke on The Pivot Podcast, where the host asks the NFL player, “How in the hell did you pull Simone Biles?”
Biles, who accompanied her now husband to the interview, erupted into laughter.
“It’s really how she pulled me,” Owens responds of the artistic gymnast he married in April 2023.
The match
The couple had only been on the app for a few days, and after they both swiped right – Biles liked him first – they matched.
Owens, who played for the Houston Texans and Green Bay Packers, claims he had never heard of Biles, now the most decorated gymnast in history.
“A lot of people don’t believe me when I say I had no clue,” he tells Vanity Fair in a 2024 joint interview with Biles. Explaining that when she was the 2016 Rio Olympics, he was at training camp at Missouri Western State University with no Olympic coverage, he adds, “I never once was like, Oh, let me check gymnastics out.”
He repeated that sentiment on the December 20, 2023 podcast and ruffled several feathers. Fans refused to believe that a professional athlete had not heard of Simone Biles.
“My husband has never watched the Olympics and he knows who Simone Biles is,” one fan writes in the comments section of the video, shared on TikTok. Another writes, “Not knowing [who] Simone Biles is when you’re an athlete is WILD and hardly believable.”
A third adds, “not knowing a U.S. gold medalist Olympian in a very internationally competitive sport is actually crazy.”
‘Must be pretty good’
Owens insists that he had no idea he was about to date the GOAT (greatest of all time) until she liked a few of his Instagram posts and invited him to view her profile.
“I was like, man, she got a lot of followers, she must be pretty good,” and he finally responded to the message that was waiting for him, from Biles, in the dating app.
And when the two started talking, magic happened.
“The second week I met him in person,” Biles tells Vanity Fair, “and the rest is history. We were hooked.”
Gushing over the gorgeous athlete, Owens said that he first fell for her laugh. “I just noticed her laugh. It was just contagious. We could talk all day and we’d stayed up late, and there just wasn’t an awkward moment.”
‘The catch’
He did make a couple of awkward statements when he spoke on The Pivot Podcast, a segment that’s hit the eyes of 1.1 million fans.
Joking that he’s “the catch” in their relationship, triggered online critics who were quick to fire back in the comments section of the TikTok video.
“I had no idea who Johnathan Owens was until Simone Biles introduced him to us,” writes one cyber fan, while a second shares, “Who’s Johnathan Owens?”
A third writes, “This kinda made me sad for her.”
And that’s just on TikTok.
Fans also responded to the clip on X, sharing their bitter thoughts on Owens’ “cringe” comments.
“How utterly stupid & disrespectful. He should have kept all of that BS to himself. Damn, no one would know who he is if it wasn’t for Simone Biles,” tweets one user. The comment continues, “What man who is truly in love with a woman would try to diminish her in public or private. Simone needs to reassess this marriage.”
Another cybernaut says, “cringe and embarrassing to be honest. He shouldn’t have disclosed all that.”
Responding to that message, one user decides that “He wants to humble her,” but another netizen disagrees: “Have you seen her? Nothing to be humbled about.”
‘That really hurt’
Though fans were defending her, Biles said it went too far.
In April, chatting on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Biles explains that at first, she “thought it was hilarious” but later it “hurt [her] feelings.”
“Then one night, I broke down and I’m like, ‘Why are you guys talking about my husband like this? Like, you don’t know him. You don’t know who he is.’”
“That really hurt that they were talking about my husband like that,” she continued. “Because for me, it’s like, ‘Talk about me all you want, but don’t come for my family, never.’ Because I’ve been in the limelight long enough where I can brush things off, have my little powwow about it.”
And then, almost five months since her husband’s interview went viral, Biles shared an Instagram story, slamming the public for attacking her man.
“I’m going to quickly address this, the joke was never a joke! Y’all are blatantly being disrespectful to my relationship and my husband,” Biles wrote in the story that disappeared after 24 hours. “So I’m gonna go ahead and say this one time. Respectfully, (expletive) off.
“If you keep commenting or tweeting at me I’m just going to block you. simple as that.”
She concluded her post by thanking “everyone else that supports us, we love y’all so much.”
‘Here with you’
Recently, Owens took time off training camp with the Bears to join parents Nellie and Ronald Biles in Paris for the 2024 Olympics, cheering on the record-breaking gymnast as she slayed the competition.
And only weeks before, he had a cursive ‘S” tattooed on his ring finger.
“No words can describe how proud of you i am baby…I’m so thankful to be apart of this journey with you,” he writes in a loving Instagram post to Biles on July 1. “Just sounds so surreal being able to say my wife is the best to EVER do it, how did i get so lucky, I love you so much”
