Vince McMahon made it clear earlier today in that big conference call that cuts were coming, including to talent. Once the employees were warned, it didn’t take long for the names to start coming out. Per an announcement on WWE.com, they’ve announced the release of eight Superstars as of this writing:

WWE has come to terms on the release of Drake Maverick (James Curtin), Curt Hawkins (Brian Myers), Karl Anderson (Chad Allegra), Luke Gallows (Drew Hankinson), Heath Slater (Heath Miller), Eric Young (Jeremy Fritz), EC3 (Michael Hutter) and Lio Rush (Lionel Green). We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

None of these are exactly shocking, as they haven’t been pushed as big stars in WWE (and some like EC3 haven’t even been on TV in months), but that’s a lot of people to let go at one time, as opposed to their usual release announcements that come in ones and twos. Also, Drake Maverick was announced as a competitor in the NXT Cruiserweight Tournament, where he’ll now need to be replaced.

When this news story was first posted on WWE.com, it only listed Maverick, Hawkins, Maverick, EC3, and Rush, but it was edited within a few minutes to add Gallows, Slater, and Young. That may mean more names are on the way, presumably as they’re informed personally so they don’t learn they’ve lost their jobs via the website.

Update: Aiden English, who has most recently been working on commentary, has now been added to the list, as well as WWE Hall Of Famer Kurt Angle.

Update 2: Sarah Logan, formerly of the Riott Squad, has now been released, as has referee Mike Chioda, who has been with WWE since 1989.

Dwayne Johnson doesn’t strike me as a guy who hears “no” often. He was (and still occasionally is) an extremely popular wrestler who transitioned into an extremely popular actor with multiple franchises to his name. Also, people call him “The Rock” like that’s totally normal. But one of his biggest career what-ifs is the franchise that he’s not part of.

When asked on Instagram if there was a movie role that he “wanted but lost to another actor,” Johnson replied, “In Hollywood, actors are kind of like in-a-box. There are actors that can vie for a particular role because it allows for them to have a certain look, skin color, size, etc. Fortunately, for me, there aren’t a lot of guys at all who look like me. So, all of my roles, from the beginning of my career, I’ve been a lucky son of a b*tch that they’ve been created and designed for me — except Jack Reacher.” Yup, Johnson wanted to play Jack Reacher, a role that went to Tom Cruise, despite Cruise being 5′ 7″ and Jack Reacher, the book character, being 6′ 5″. The same height as the Rock.

He added, “Now, this was ten years ago, and I was in a much different place, I recognize that. Tom was the biggest movie star in the world, and I was not… I’m positive that the role of Jack Reacher, because it was an established character, an IP that was well known and beloved around the world, that I wouldn’t have had the creative space to do what I wanted with the character. I look back in gratitude that I didn’t get Jack Reacher.”

This worked out well for everyone: Tom Cruise got to star in Jack Reacher and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, two fun movies in a “lazy afternoon on TNT” kind of way, and because the Rock’s availability was open, he received a phone call from Universal to make a cameo in Fast Five. Eventually leading to this great moment in cinema history.

(Via Collider)

Most festivals and concerts have either been postponed or canceled entirely for weeks now, and there’s really no word yet on when some of them might come back. Generally, it looks like most events are rescheduling for the fall, like Coachella, which was pushed back from April to October. It remains to be seen if that will be enough of a delay. California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to think it’s not necessarily a matter of time, but that it’s more about one important thing happening.

Newsom answered questions during a press event yesterday (April 14), and he was asked about when he thinks life in California can return to normal (or closer to it). He suggested that mass gatherings (like concerts) likely won’t come back until a coronavirus vaccine is widely available, saying, “The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine. So large-scale events that bring in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of strangers, all together across every conceivable difference, health and otherwise, is not in the cards based upon our current guidelines and current expectations. […] When you suggest June, July, August: it is unlikely.”

This comes after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month that a vaccine could be a year to 18 months away.

Watch Newsom’s explanation above.

I miss sports a lot, and if you are reading our sports website, odds are high you miss sports, too. I miss buzzer-beaters in basketball games, world-class goals in soccer games, and considering the point of the normal sports calendar we are in, I really miss baseball teams hitting moonshot home runs that constantly leave me in awe of how a human being can mash a baseball hundreds of feet into the air and have it land in the outstretched palm of some random guy who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Unfortunately, we do not have that in the United States right now as part of a preventative measure to try and slow the spread of COVID-19. What we do have, however, are some sports leagues in other corners of the world, and fortunately for us, they are playing real, live games. An example of this came via the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan, where Chu Yu-Hsien of the Rakuten Monkeys hit a walk-off dinger against the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions.

Getting the obvious out of the way here, it is very strange to see this sort of thing happen in a venue that does not have fans, something that Dr. Anthony Fauci said we will need to see in the United States if we are going to get sports any time soon. The mannequins in the stands and the piped-in noise are a nice touch, even if they are going to take some time to get used to — also it’s very funny that despite having no actual fans the TV broadcast still cuts to the mannequin crowd reaction as the guy rounds the bases.

Having said that, holy crap! It’s a live baseball game ending with someone hitting a baseball to the moon to win! This is like standing under a waterfall after spending a month in the desert, man. And what a homer this was! The pitcher missed his spot completely and left a meatball over the middle of the plate, and the batter made him pay, turning on the pitch and dropping it right into the seats that are usually occupied by fans who decide at the last minute they wanted to go check out a ballgame.

It stinks, but we’re not getting live sports on our shores for a while. It’ll be tough for fans, sure, but fortunately, we have other ways to consume baseball, and basketball, and football, and everything else that we miss. At the very least, I have never been so invested in a walk-off that did not involve my team.

As a resident of Washington state, where voters have been able to vote by mail for all elections for nearly a decade, I’ve been watching recent debates over voting systems with fascination.

People tend to forget that Washington is even up here in the corner of the country, so it’s a little weird to suddenly be getting so much attention for the way we vote. But what’s funny is that our system is getting attention only on a surface level. Like, people are paying attention to the idea of mail-in voting—with some totally freaking out over it—but most are not actually paying attention to any of the details of our voting system or election results.

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Since the President started harping on mail-in voting being “RIPE for FRAUD,” here’s the gist of conversations I’ve been seeing:

“Mail-in voting is a good option for upcoming elections since we don’t know if it will be safe to send people to the polls.”

“What?! No! There’s too much opportunity for widespread fraud with mail-in ballots!”

“But what about the states who have done all mail-in voting for years without widespread fraud?”

“Those are all ‘blue’ states! Clearly mail-in voting is a big Democrat conspiracy to win elections!”

The total jump over logic aside, there’s some simple proof up here in the Northwest that the Democrats-cheat-by-mail argument bears no weight. Let’s look at Washington and our neighbor to the south, Oregon—two states with all mail-in voting. Most would consider these states pretty solidly “blue,” right? (They’re not solid blue, but that’s another discussion. Just stick with me here.)

On a state level, elections are run by the Secretary of State. These elected officials control and oversee the running of elections—local, state, and national. They are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the election, the privacy and validity of ballots, and voter registration. They are in charge of election security, and by extension, voter fraud.

So who is Washington’s Secretary of State? Her name is Kim Wyman. She was elected by the people of Washington state in 2012 and 2016.

Who cares, you ask? Well, Kim Wyman is a Republican.

Oregon’s Secretary of State is named Bev Clarno. She’s been serving since March 31, 2019—and she’s also a Republican. She was appointed to the position after her predecessor, Dennis Richardson, passed away while in office. He had been elected by the people of Oregon in 2016.

And yep. He was also a Republican. How about that.

Riddle me this: If mail-in voting is some big conspiracy by Democrats to steal elections, how is it that both of these predominantly blue states elected Republicans to oversee their elections? I mean, if there’s really fraud here that’s actually impacting election results, wouldn’t those sneaky, conniving Democrats at least make sure to elect a Democrat to the position charged with election integrity and validity?

Oh oh oh and—if there was really was widespread voter fraud among Democrats in these states, don’t you think the Republicans who are in charge of the elections would be sounding the alarm?

Yes, of course they would. But they’re not. Because it’s not happening.

Kim Wyman—again, Washington’s Republican Secretary of State who oversees elections—has said that the idea that widespread voter fraud is rampant in the U.S. is “ludicrous on its face.” And Washington, with it’s decade-long experience with mail-in voting, ranks #2 in Harvard University’s Electoral Integrity Project—an ongoing study that surveys hundreds of election experts how each state fares in its electoral processes.

Does this mean that voter fraud doesn’t exist at all? Of course not. But it does mean that there’s nothing inherently favorable to Democrats in a mail-in system. Washington and Oregon have spent many years improving the process and the security of the process of voting this way, implementing hundreds of safeguards at various levels to make sure voting happens as it should.

No system or safeguard is 100% foolproof. Voter ID laws can be gamed with fake IDs. Signatures can be forged if someone practices hard. Electronic voting machines can be hacked. Election officials can be bribed. Pollsters can “lose” ballots.

Any number of things can happen in an election, and they very occasionally do. There is evidence of voter fraud, but it’s by no means rampant or widespread. Even if you look at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud website, you’ll find around 1200 incidents of voter fraud. But that’s for the entire country, and over a 20-year period, which includes billions of voting instances. They state that it’s not an exhaustive list, but if they’re trying to make the point that voter fraud is a concern, they’d surely list just about every instance they can find. Even if it’s twice or three times what they list, that’s still a teensy-tiny, bunch-of-zeroes-after-the-decimal-point, fraction of of a percent of total votes—by no definition “rampant.”

Not to mention, voter fraud and election tampering are actual crimes, punishable by law, and I personally don’t believe that there’s a huge, widespread swath of Americans chomping at the bit to criminally cheat in an election. This deep distrust of our fellow Americans due to partisanship is gross and needs to stop.

Bottom line: The fact that voters in both of these predominantly blue states elected—by mail—Republican officials to be in charge of their elections seems like more than adequate proof that well-orchestrated mail-in ballot systems can work beautifully and fairly, regardless of party loyalties.

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Video games are, for many, the cure to boredom as they stay put and wait for the worst of our current reality to pass by. The gaming industry is a life raft for a number of people, including gamblers who need something to lose money on.

They’re also a World Health Organization-sanctioned good way to pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic as people hunker down, make bells on the virtual Animal Crossing market, and just generally try to endure one of the weirdest moments in recent existence.

If you’re still looking for a more of-the-moment game, however, it’s hard to do better than a title inspired by coronavirus and the subsequent social distancing that’s followed. Enter COVID-19: Coronavirus Quarantine, a game from first-time game maker Derrick Rossignol (who happens to be a music editor at Uproxx), with illustrations from Kjetil Rossignol. The duo wanted to make the most of the pandemic by creating a game that works on Game Boy ROMs.

The game’s look is certainly Pokemon-inspired, referencing the series and the current environment we exist in, where toilet paper is inexplicably scarce and our fridges might be starting to look a little bare. The title is quick, and though it may remind you of Stardew Valley, there isn’t much of a grind to it, which is exactly the point.

“I think somebody who isn’t patient enough for the relaxed pace of a Stardew Valley-type game but still wants a life sim could get into this. It’s not even necessarily a game to “get into,” though: In less than five minutes, you can see everything there is to see,” Rossignol said. “It’s a dumb game, and that’s the point. Mainly, the goal for making this was to get a quick laugh, raise some money for a good cause, and get a simple message across: It’s important we do our part and stay inside as much as we can, even if it’s really boring sometimes.”

Even better, the game costs a dollar and proceeds will go to charity. It also comes with a fun illustrated instruction booklet with simple instructions like, well, stay home. Which is good advice! And a good cause, to boot.

DJ Jazzy Jeff recently revealed that he’d joined the ranks of hip-hop artists who contracted the coronavirus and in a pair of new interviews, detailed his experience having COVID-19, including symptoms, effects, and his feeling of being “terrified to death.”

During a call-in with his former rhyme partner Will Smith’s Snapchat series, Will From Home, he told Smith that he thinks “we’re really at the beginning” of the crisis. He reeled off a long list of afflictions, including, “a temperature that reached 103. I had the chills. I lost sense of smell. I lost sense of taste.”

On another chat with Tamron Hall, he said, “I didn’t even realize the severity of it.” He explained how the symptoms first started to come over him, saying, “When my wife and I were at the store, I looked at her and told her I didn’t feel well. And she was asking what was wrong, and I said ‘I feel a little achy, like I’m coming down with something.’” After that, he says, “I literally went home and got into bed and almost don’t remember the next 11 days after that.”

During that call, he also explained that a doctor wouldn’t test him for the virus, but instead “gave me a flu test and then gave me an x-ray on my lungs and said I had pneumonia in both of my lungs.” That diagnosis, he says, “terrified me to death.”

Jeff hypothesized that he’d likely contracted the virus at the annual Black Summit of the National Brotherhood of Skiers in Ketchum, Idaho in March, where over 100 attendees reportedly went home ill with COVID-19.

As New York drill was becoming a fixture on playlists and radio stations, one of the genre’s brightest stars prematurely passed away. Pop Smoke was just beginning his journey toward being a star when he was shot to death during a home invasion. Although the impact of his loss is still being felt, there are also those picking up the torch to carry on his legacy as frontrunner of the drill scene’s takeover, including fellow Brooklynite Fivio Foreign, who’s becoming a star in his own right.

During a recent check-in with Hot97 Fivio Foreign spoke about Pop Smoke’s legacy and his own place within it, revealing that the two were working together as recently as the day before Pop Smoke’s death. “The day before he passed, we did a song together,” he said. “It’s gonna be on my tape. It’s fire.” He also called his late friend a legend in the making, saying, “He made it to legend status. He’s a legend in my eyes. He did a lot in a short period of time.” The tape containing what may well be the final recording of Pop Smoke’s life is releasing later this month.

Among those helping to keep Pop Smoke’s memory are Travis Scott, who shared a snippet of an unreleased collaboration shortly after Smoke’s death, Lil Tjay, who paid homage with “Forever Pop,” Joey Badass, who wrote his own song about Pop, and 50 Cent, who promised to finish Pop’s debut album and promised it would release very soon.

Watch Fivio Foreign’s full interview with Hot97 above.

Summertime in 2019 was captivated by a wave of Spanish-infused West Coast hip-hop thanks to Watts, California’s own Ambjaay and his platinum-selling hit “Uno.” The catchy song caught the attention of celebrities worldwide and landed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as well as the publication’s 100 Best Songs of 2019.

With production by Almighty Quise, “Uno” kickstarted a plethora of Latino-influenced slaps such as YG’s “Go Loko” last year and Tyga’s “Ayy Macarena” remake, and though the 20-year-old is proud of his influence and accomplishments, he’s ready to show the world what he’s got with his latest release, It Cost To Live Like This 2.

The project’s only guest feature is Wiz Khalifa on “Blow The Pickle,” who Jaay says was extremely supportive of him from the very beginning as the song began to gain steam on the fun video-sharing app TikTok. As someone who blew up relatively quickly straight out of high school, the buzzing star is simply grateful things happened the way they did.

Uproxx got the opportunity to catch up with Jaay about It Cost To Live Like This 2, his thoughts on TikTok fame, and why everyone should expect more from him than just songs like “Uno.”

On It Cost To Live Like This 2, you have a song called “Blow The Pickle” on there with Wiz Khalifa and I know Wiz was one of the first people that supported you when “Uno” came out. How did that collab come about?

So basically, Wiz already wanted to get on “Uno.” My A&R sent it to him, and he sent it right back. He been messing with me for a long time. It’s not too many rappers that be messing with up-and-coming rappers like that or supporting them. He’s a real humble dude. I was just blessed for him to mess with me while I’m up-and-coming.

How did you guys first get in touch? Was it over Instagram?

He hit me on Instagram, and then he was like, “Aye, let me get your number.” I gave him my number, he FaceTimed me, and was like, “Can I get the ‘Uno’ beat, so I could freestyle it?” And then every show, some fans will just send me a video of him freestyling to the “Uno” beat. It’s crazy.

That’s dope! When did you first realize that “Uno” was a hit? You probably knew it was going to be big, but when did you realize, “Dang, this really hit.”

What people don’t know is, “Uno” been blew up where I was from. But probably, like the middle of the summer when it blew up big. I’m talking about like movie stars, actors, rappers noticing is when it started going crazy. When people first started gravitating to it, I just wanted to work harder. I was like, man, I got one, I got to get more in. That’s how I feel, you can’t just get stuck on one. I was trying to make more. I just feel like it was a catchy, fun song. When I first made it, I kind of spoke it to existence. I was like, “This the one.” The producer, he didn’t even have no faith in me. I’m like, “Bro, this the one.” Because you wouldn’t expect people to do this, wouldn’t expect people to come like this on a record like this.

Do you ever worry about sounding too West Coast, to the point where maybe it won’t resonate with other people?

I’ve got different songs that’s not West Coast, like trap, but I’m different from other West Coast rappers. It kind of be hard to branch off, to be honest — everything sound the same now. Like you might hear drum patterns in a beat, and it still be West Coast. Everybody’s got their own style, though.

Yep. Very true. Now, “Uno” blew up on TikTok. What are your thoughts on TikTok? Did you know what that app was before it blew up on there?

I love that app, man. I feel like without Instagram and apps like that, it would be hard. You know how back in the days they used to like pass off they CDs out they trunks. I swear if we didn’t have internet or these little apps, it’d be hard to blow. It’d be hard to do music. So that really helped me a lot, because people get to show how creative they is and do little videos. Actually, since we’ve been on quarantine, I fell in love with TikTok. I been learning how to use the app.

Out of all places for you to blow up, did you think TikTok would be the app that did it?

Not really. Because I had went away from it for a little while. I wasn’t really on it. But, once the labels showed me, I was like, “Damn, this sh*t crazy.” That one song helps you build up your fanbase for sure, though.

I also saw something where you mentioned in LA Latinos and Black people don’t really get along, so this song can bring us together. I want to know more about your take on that and where you have seen a positive effect.

It ain’t no race song. It’s just bringing both cultures together. What I mean about that is, “Uno” has Latino instruments and I just combine both to bring us together. I swear, if you go to jail — I haven’t been to jail, but there’s this story: If you go to jail, it’s a race card. You got to roll with your color when you go to jail. This just me doing my research. Some Mexicans don’t get along with Black people, some Black people don’t get along with Mexicans. I was just doing that just to have fun. It’s both of our cultures in one.

Are you seeing positive effects from the song?

Yeah, it’d be like 80 percent positive. 20 [percent] that be like, “It’s a race card” because they don’t got nothing else to do. It’s a fun song. It ain’t like racist words. It’s just basic Spanish words in the song.

Yeah. I think YG and Tyga kind of had that same issue with “Go Loko” and “Ayy Macarena.”

And that’s another thing I be wanting to say. People don’t know this and I don’t even like doing this, but I was like one of the first ones to come with that sound in 2019. I made “Uno,” like, on January 3, just before I got signed. “Uno” got me signed. I been made it, we just bumped it up.

It already blew up where I was from and then everybody started doing songs like that. I feel like once you come with your own sound, and then everybody was hearing it, and [some Latino people] just felt like, okay, you wearing it out. “Y’all wearing our culture out.”

I was looking at your Twitter, and I saw you got your first plaque. Congrats! How does it feel?

It feel good! Where I come from, not too many people getting plaques and it just went platinum, too. Where I come from, it’s the projects. For me to even get signed, not too many people doing that. Most people my age give up their goals, don’t really chase their dreams, [and] don’t really want to be nothing. I had to change my life and do something positive with my life.

Growing up in Watts, what other options were you looking at, outside of rap?

If I wasn’t rapping, I’d want to transition into an actor. I wanted to be a basketball player. I was going to be one of those, though. I don’t want to just rap. I want to go into acting, do better things to open doors.

It feels like nowadays rappers can blow up so fast. Three years is a very short amount of time to blow.

Yeah, I feel I blew up at the right time. Before my time, my brother, he was a music producer, and my sister, she used to write poetry. It was always around me. It was just up to me to go through my own problems to figure out what I really wanted to do. When you fresh out of high school, you don’t really know what you want to do.

Especially people our age, most people my age don’t want to go to college. When you graduate high school, life hits you hard and you really don’t know what you fixing to do. I ain’t know what I was fixing to do. I tried to get a job, it wasn’t working for me and I was just rapping at the same time, while I’m trying to get a job. I just came with that one, and God was just on my side. Got lucky. I feel like, if you put your mind to it, everything’s going to work out. If you really try to go hard, everything going to work out.

It Cost To Live Like This 2 is out now on Columbia Records. Get it here.