One of the longest-simmering feuds that was set to come to a boil at WrestleMania 36 was between Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins. The two had been running into each other on Monday Night Raw and at pay-per-views for the past three months, and it all culminated at what eventually became a no-disqualification match at the Showcase Of The Immortals.
During the bout, Rollins clocked Owens in the head with the timekeeper’s bell, which caused the referee to award the contest to Owens via disqualification. Owens, unhappy with this result, got on the mic and challenged Rollins to restart the match as a no-DQ match, a stipulation the Monday Night Messiah happily took. He would regret that decision a few minutes later, however: Owens eventually got him laid out on the announce table, then scaled the gigantic WrestleMania sign hanging inside the WWE Performance Center and catapulted himself off the top of it, putting Rollins into the ground and exploding the table in the process. See for yourself:
Shortly thereafter, Owens delivered a Stone Cold Stunner to Rollins to score the pinfall victory — his first in WrestleMania history. Rollins’ record at the Show Of Shows is now a still-impressive 6-2. Is this the end of their feud? Only time will tell.
Following an intro by WrestleMania host Rob “Gronk” “The White Tiger” Gronkowski, the Women’s Tag Team Championship Match between Bliss Cross Applesauce and the Kabuki Warriors opened Night One of WrestleMania 36. Even after weeks of crowd-free TV at the Performance Center, it felt strange to see WrestleMania entrances with no fans to cheer. On top of that, Kairi Sane entered in a fabulous new pirate outfit, which she definitely must have commissioned thinking she’d be wearing it in Tampa Bay.
The four women still gave it their all, however. Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross had motivations that were easy to understand — they first won this Championship on Raw last August, in a Fatal Four-Way match against the Kabuki Warriors, Fire & Desire, and then-Champions the IIconics. Bliss and Cross held the Titles for 61 days before losing them to the Kabuki Warriors in October at the Hell in a Cell PPV. Since then Asuka and Kairi have become the longest-reigning Women’s Tag Team Champions to date, holding the Titles for 181 days and not even having to defend them very often.
That reign ended tonight, after a hard-fought, high-energy match in the mostly empty Performance Center. Nikki Cross hit Kairi Sane with a spinning neckbreaker, then tagged in Alexa Bliss, who hit Twisted Bliss to pin Sane. Bliss and Cross are now the first-ever two-time WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions.
Basketball fans’ desire to watch NBA players hoop during the league’s suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a whole lot of video games. The NBA 2K League held a tournament that featured NBA and WNBA players, among others, while ESPN is in the midst of a 2K tournament of its own.
What has been lacking, outside of replays of games, has been actual, live basketball. This is understandable, because that cannot happen until games can safely be played. A potential workaround, though, is reportedly being kicked around by the league and the Worldwide Leader in Sports.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski, the two sides are in discussions about a H-O-R-S-E competition that would include some of the biggest names in the league.
The NBA and ESPN are working on televising a H-O-R-S-E competition involving several high-profile players, sources say. Players would shoot in isolation – presumably in home gyms – and match shots against competitors. Details are still being finalized.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) April 4, 2020
As Wojnarowski laid out, all of this is still being finalized, but it’s literally any sort of live basketball being played by professionals, which is much better than nothing. It also would not be the first time has leaned into the idea of a H-O-R-S-E competition, as it implemented one as an All-Star event in 2009 and 2010. Both were won by Kevin Durant, who beat Joe Johnson and O.J. Mayo during the first competition and Omri Casspi and Rajon Rondo in the second.
Commissioners from a number of major American sports leagues held a conference call on Saturday with President Donald Trump as part of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among those on the call was NBA commissioner Adam Silver, according to the president’s daily agenda, and per a report by ESPN, Silver expressed a desire for leagues to play a roll in one of Trump’s main priorities at one point or another: restarting the American economy.
The president had previously said his hope was to begin getting Americans back to work by Easter Sunday, which was eventually scrapped. But at some point in the future that we just do not know, Americans will be able to get back to work, and when they do, Silver wants leagues to be at the forefront.
Via Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN:
NBA commissioner Adam Silver told those on the call that the leagues were the first to shut down and that they would love to lead the way in starting the economy once there was an “all clear” from public health officials, sources familiar with the call told ESPN.
It is unclear exactly what Silver would mean by restarting the economy beyond putting on games, which would lead to workers for the teams/stadiums and broadcast partners getting back into the swing of things. Later in the day on Saturday, Trump held a press conference in which he said leagues “gotta get back.”
Trump on sports leagues: “They gotta get back. They can’t do this.” He says they weren’t designed to be shut down.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 4, 2020
Of course, while leagues do need to get back, as Silver apparently told Trump, that has to occur with the blessing of public health officials, something that could take an awfully long time. In fact, while Trump reportedly said on the call that he believes the NFL should be good to play games by September, public health experts told the Washington Post that it’s far too early into this process to predict anything regarding when we’ll be able to see games played again.
This also does not necessarily mean that this NBA season is salvageable. Brian Windhorst of ESPN brought word that there’s mounting pessimism in talks between the league and the NBPA about being able to restart this season, with the Chinese Basketball Association’s struggles to relaunch its league and the potential that picking this campaign back up can impact 2020-21 as major factors.
With the total number of COVID-19 cases in the US nearing 300,000, the need for surgical masks and other medical supplies is higher than ever. Recently, some celebrities have taked the initiative to purchase masks and have them made to be donated to various hospitals. Earlier this week, DJ Khaled and his philanthropic foundation We The Best partnered with Direct Relief and Simplehuman to purchase and donate 100,000 masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to healthcare workers in Miami and New York hospitals. Last week, Future announced that he would also be donating masks through a partnership between his non-profit, FreeWishes Foundation, and Atlanta Sewing Style. Now, Jay-Z and Meek Mill have announced their own plans to donate masks, but this time, to prisons that are in need of them.
Working through their criminal reform organization, Reform Alliance, Jay-Z and Meek Mill announced they’ll donate 100,000 surgical masks to various prisons across the country. News of their donation arrived just a day after rapper YNW Melly revealed he had tested positive for the virus while awaiting his trial in a South Florida jail.
According to CBS News, of the 100,000 masks, the Reform Alliance will send 40,000 masks to the Tennessee Department of Corrections, 5,000 to Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, 50,000 to Rikers Island jail in New York City — which had 650 inmates released from the prison to fight overcrowding according to New York City mayor Bill De Blasio — and an additional 2,500 masks to a Rikers medical facility.
Speaking on the donations to CBS News, Jessica Jackson, the chief advocacy officer at Reform Alliance said, “We’re really worried about the number of people coming in and out of the facility, and the fact that the people living there might be sitting ducks during this pandemic… We’re still looking at jail and prison populations that are completely overcrowded to dangerous levels when you’re looking at a pandemic like this head-on.
“This is a movement,” she said. “But we need all of the voices we can get.”
Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.