Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-36512555-20200202084241/@comment-9782468-20200206235154

But it doesn't matter if he knew. He needed to know that it was Itachi's reason for leaving. Or ya know, the whole "too much attention for no reason" bit. Either one. Because without a believable reason, Itachi puts his own motives in question.

Kisame doesn't care about attention lol, but he follows Itachi's lead.

His method barely worked because if Itachi was solely lying to get Kisame to leave, he almost sacrificed his cover for it because Kisame didn't believe his reasons for not wanting to fight.

There's no reason to lie there. Absolutely none. The only reason to lie would be to get Kisame to believe that the best course of action was to leave. His reason instead made Kisame question him and Itachi has literally never given someone more praise than they deserved. He said it because he's honest about his abilities. Itachi had other things he could have said that would have made him leave (and again, one of them was already proven effective when used regarding the Konoha Jonin).