Jimmy Kimmel accept's Ted Cruz's one-on-one challenge with some civil trash-talking

On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took umbrage at some comments Jimmy Kimmel made about him on Tuesday night's Jimmy Kimmel Live, and on Thursday's show, Kimmel read the challenge Cruz tweeted at him.

"Besmirched? He really knows his way around a diss track, this Ted," Kimmel joked. "So I immediately went online and googled 'how to guard a blobfish,'" then accepted Cruz's challenge, on one condition: "We both wear VERY short shorts." Cruz said no, Kimmel countered with "crop tops?" and Cruz tweeted back: "Never mind the dress code. We can play to 10, or 21, or 50, your choice." Kimmel saw a flaw: "Well, first of all, if we play to 50, we'll both be dead by the end of the game. So maybe that's the way to go — I sacrifice myself for the good of the land."

"But this now could be a real thing," Kimmel said. "Why he wants to do this, I have no idea. You really want to play basketball against a talk-show host? You already lost an election to a realty show host, isn't that enough?" But he accepted the challenge: "Who needs to watch LeBron and Kevin Durant again when we can instead focus on two out-of-shape white men in their 50s with little to no athletic ability?" He offered a date to Cruz, too: "Maybe we should do this the Monday before the midterms — it would be fun to see him lose twice in one week, right?"

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Cruz said yes, nodding to the joke about losing to a reality show host.

And points for relative civility all around.