No offense to San Antonio, San Francisco, Galveston, or New York. The honorary mayor of Alabama just won some bragging rights. Charles Barkley celebrated a home win for Auburn and Alabama on Inside the NBA tonight. But it’s neither in basketball nor a regular sport. It’s a more cutthroat national pageant, Miss America. ICYMI the new Miss America is Abbie Stockard, until very recently famous as Walker Kessler’s girlfriend. Now she’s the face of Auburn, Alabama, and the reigning Miss America. And she’s given Chuck the chance to say, ‘told you so.’

After Kessler went viral for his reaction to Stockard winning, the TNT crew informed Chuckster that the new Miss America 2025 is Alabama-grown. Barkley anyway has a soft spot for the Jazz player who’s a fellow Auburn alum. So he had an initial mild reaction to the news saying, “You can say War Eagle to that.” (‘War Eagle’ is the Auburn Tigers’ battle cry.)

He wasn’t paying attention to what Ernie Johnson said earlier for sure because when he congratulated Stockard, he missed the fact that the 22-year-old is an Alabama native attending Auburn. Ernie reiterated those facts again and that lit something under Chuck. “I told you, boy, we got good-looking women and brains down there!” Chuck now has the definitive receipts to say.

If you’ve followed Sir Charles on TV long enough, you know he loves to pick on certain cities as much as he loves his home state and school. No one has a hilarious beef with the women of an entire city like Charles Barkley and the women of San Antonio.

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This time Chuck didn’t bring up San Antonio again. But he didn’t have to. It’s about the ladies of Alabama tonight and the Round Mound of Rebound. Like, he even flexed that he went to high school with one Miss Alabama, Paige Phillip, who was the Miss America runner-up in 1980.

Ernie cut it short because of time constraints, but Shaq and Kenny were already amused anticipating a comment or two about San Antonio if Chuck had the chance. At least fans fulfilled that end of the joke.

Alabama and San Antonio for Charles Barkley

A win for Auburn is as good as a personal victory for Charles Barkley. It’s so serious for Chuck, when he ran into Walker Kessler during the last NBA finals, both exchanged ‘War Eagles’ greetings. So his sentiment about his “Home Girl” winning is clear. But he kept his comments strictly about Alabama no matter how much everyone was itching for a San Antonio joke.

Chuck vs the “big ol’ women in San Antonio” is one of the biggest rivalry storylines in the NBA. He’s made several comments about them being curvy in the past even though no one can precisely pin point the origin of this feud. Sometimes San Antonio just catches strays like the time a pair of gymnasts were on TNT and Chuck said, “I bet you couldn’t do that them big a– women in San Antonio.” Most recently, he said that Spurs star, Victor Wembanyama is the “only skinny person in San Antonio.”

After a San Antonio reporter called out Chuck for fat-shaming, TNT gagged Chuck’s San Antonio commentary. He showed he wasn’t happy about that when he revealed it on a 2023 interview, “I mean, they won’t even let me talk about San Antonio anymore when I’m always talking about their big ole women down in San Antonio.” He emphasized his comments should be taken as a joke and nothing more.

But he’s exercising caution by sticking to Alabama. It fell on social media users to bring back his old comments on San Antonio. As long as that happens, Chuck’s going to be connected to San Antonio this way.