Here are your quick and dirty, editorial-free WWE Friday Night Smackdown results for June 5, 2020. This week’s show featured a Women’s Tag Team Championship match, a confrontation between Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy explaining his wreck from last week, and more. Make sure you’re here tomorrow for the complete Best and Worst of Friday Night Smackdown column.

WWE Friday Night Smackdown Results:

– Jeff Hardy opened the show talking about last week’s incident, and how he’s doubted himself but knows he didn’t slip. Eyewitnesses said they saw a man with “red hair and red beard” run away from the accident, which is why he returned to fight Sheamus. Sheamus interrupted, calling Jeff a junkie and insulting his family until Jeff attacked him. Sheamus hit a Brogue Kick and tossed Hardy into the ringside plexiglass.

– Mandy Rose and Otis lifted King Corbin’s crown. He was very upset.

1. Otis defeated King Corbin by disqualification when Corbin attacked him with a chair. Otis more or less no-sold the attack and hit Corbin with the Caterpillar.

– Throughout the show, Miz and Morrison hid in a van and played pranks on Braun Strowman, including giving him a shaken-up drink and trying to slime him but sliming Kayla Braxton instead. When that didn’t get the desired effect, they broke Braun’s car’s windshield with a bat and a golf club. An enraged Strowman flipped the van on its side.

2. Lacey Evans defeated Sonya Deville. Mandy Rose appeared on the video screen to distract Deville, leaving her open for Evans’ Women’s Right.

– Renee Young hosted a face-to-face confrontation between Intercontinental Championship Tournament finalists Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles ahead of next week’s match. Bryan convinced Styles to give Drew Gulak an opportunity tonight.

3. Drew Gulak defeated AJ Styles. Gulak countered the Styles Clash to score the upset.

– Jeff Hardy vs. Sheamus is official for Backlash.

4. The New Day and Shorty G defeated Shinsuke Nakamura, Cesaro, and Mojo Rawley. Mojo fell to the Midnight Hour to take the loss for his team.

5. Women’s Tag Team Championship Match: Bayley and Sasha Banks defeated Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross (c). Cross countered a Banks Statement into a pin, but Banks countered that into a crucifix pin of her own to win the match. Bayley and Banks are now two-time champions, and Bayley is a current double champ.

The NBA’s return to play is coming into focus, as Friday gave word that both players and the league have agreed on the parameters they will use to finish the 2019-20 season in Orlando. With that news of team numbers, playoff format and warm-up games came some other news: no trips to Disney with family.

Oh, and the league might also use artificial crowd noise from NBA 2K to make televised versions of these spectator-less games sound more like traditional NBA games. According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, video game effects are actually being considered for the TV broadcasts that will be the only way hoops fans can watch these games this summer.

– There could be crowd noise via NBA 2K video game sounds, but the NBA and NBPA is still discussing creative opportunities

Using video game crowd noise would certainly qualify as a “creative” solution to crowd-less games, but it’s not without its own controversies. Some fans have complained about European soccer matches in fan-less venues using piped-in crowd noise, which often gives belated reactions to goals or big plays because it’s essentially a person in a control room pressing buttons based on what’s happening on the field.

It would certainly make for a weird dynamic to these games, but also hide some more interesting problems with the setting including hearing everything players say on the court. Which, you know, may not be very TV-friendly in the heat of the moment. Still, not everyone was on board with the news, including some NBA players.

It was also a chance for some others to make some very good 2K-related jokes.

We’ll see if the suggestion actually takes place, but if it does there are a lot of basketball fans who will be hearing familiar sounds later this summer.

As expected, the NBPA voted Friday to unanimously approve the proposed restart of the NBA season, which will resume on July 31 at Disney World in Orlando and will include 22 teams and an eight-game regular season with a play-in tournament for the final playoff spots.

That schedule means the NBA Finals will go through mid-October, which subsequently entails a significant delay in the start of next season, as the league tries to figure out a way to fit in an offseason before another grueling 82-game schedule kicks off in earnest. The preliminary report was that the league tentatively planned on starting the 2020-2021 season on December 1.

According to the latest report from Shams Charania of The Athletic, however, the new season is “unlikely” to begin that soon, given that it would provide less than a month between the Finals and the start of training camp. There has been speculation that the league might shoot instead for a Christmas start date, although the NBA and the players’ union are still negotiating on that.

The NBPA told players on call today that the 2020-21 season starting on Dec. 1 is “unlikely” and plans to negotiate the date: https://t.co/OiSdQosgvU

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 5, 2020

The bubble scenario in Orlando will include a number of safety precautions amid the continued outbreak of COVID-19. Players will have to be tested daily, and although the league won’t shut down if someone tests positive, that player will have to enter a period of mandatory quarantine.

Resuming a full regular season so quickly after the Finals will present a number of other obstacles, all of which will have to be taken into account as the league tries to finalize the complex schematics of how it will move forward after a turbulent hiatus that will have long-lasting effects on the future of the NBA.

FX’s Atlanta is not currently airing new episodes, but a clip from one of its most memorable past airings has gained new appreciation online in the wake of recent protests about police violence against people of color. Donald Glover’s FX show is certainly not known to pull punches on racial issues, and it’s become a cultural touchpoint in recent days of protests as tens of thousands take to the streets to protest police brutality.

The cartoon, an ad for the fictional Coconut Crunch-O’s cereal, features cartoon children exploring what looks like a tomb with a police officer. The group then encounters a wolf, presumably the Wally the police officer on the box is admonishing.

The three children get the bowls of coconut cereal as Wally bursts out of his sarcophagus too late. As he approaches the children, though, he’s taken to the ground by the police officer, who insists he “stop resisting” and roughs him up while he’s cuffed on the ground. The children look on in horror, insisting Wally could have some cereal as the officer puts a knee into the wolf’s back and then, on his neck.

“He was trying to steal your cereal, right?” the officer asked, otherwise emotionally blank as the children tell him to stop and say he’s hurting the wolf. The scene is reminiscent of the disturbing images captured of George Floyd’s death, where a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as he died screaming for help.

The commercial continues as usual, but the children look horrified by what’s taking place in front of them in an otherwise cartoonish scenario. The in-episode commercial made waves in 2016 when it first aired during an episode in which the show’s main character appeared on a fictional cable news show. The cereal commercial was among the fake “ads” that played during the episode. But as the nation has fixed its attention on another swath of images of police brutality the video recirculated on social media, the similarities between the in-episode critique on police brutality has popped up online across various platforms. It’s a reminder that the events that have made Americans leave their homes to protest have happened across American cities for a long time, and Atlanta is just one of the places where that kind of violence has been critiqued long before 2020.

View Entire Post ›

Other than like, fiber and plenty of water for that *particular* kind of bathroom problem.

View Entire Post ›

“It’s encouraging to see Zuck post this, but I’ll maintain my skepticism until some sort of action is taken by the company,” one Facebook employee told BuzzFeed News.

View Entire Post ›

A list for anyone who periodically gets the My Buddy and Kid Sister jingle stuck in their head.

View Entire Post ›

“Because he was black, they felt that they needed five cops to tackle him to the ground and drag him to behind the other cops.”

View Entire Post ›

Protests over the death of George Floyd have culminated in some of the largest civil rights uprisings in history. And white, wealthy areas like Santa Monica are no longer exempt.

View Entire Post ›