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Amanda Nunes (23-5) earned a unanimous decision victory over Irene Aldana (14-7) to retain her bantamweight championship in the main event of UFC 289 from Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. After the victory, she cut her gloves off and retired from MMA as one of the all-time greats.

https://twitter.com/arielhelwani/status/1667759436826308609

Nunes gave Aldana plenty of respect early in the fight, keeping her distance, but finding her range. Nunes earned a takedown but immediately hopped back to her feet, unwilling to engage on the ground. Aldana was hesitant to exchange, keeping her hands tight and overreacting to every feint. With about a minute remaining in the first round, Aldana caught Nunes with a nice counter right that sent the champ stumbling.

In the second, Nunes looked downstairs, with big leg kicks that started to show damage on the challenger’s lead leg. Aldana got dropped midway through the round with an easy takedown, but Nunes refused to do anything on the ground. Aldana began to let her hands go late, and Nunes responded with a combo and a nasty clinch and knee to the head. Nunes continued to pour it on late, earning a third takedown with 15 seconds remaining in the second.

The third saw Nunes bully Aldana to the ground three times, maintaining top control for most of the round. With less than a minute remaining in the round, Aldana looked exhausted and started letting her hands go. Nunes caught Aldana with another big combination followed by a clinch and knee.

Aldana opened the championship rounds with much more activity, but almost immediately ate a gigantic elbow from Nunes. The champ continued to pick apart Aldana with shot after shot, mixing up takedown attempts with elbows, front kicks, and overhand shots.

The fifth was much of the same for Nunes, who earned a takedown and maintained top position basically the entire round.

Nunes defended the bantamweight crown for the first time since winning the belt back at UFC 277 against Julianna Peña. Nunes came into Saturday night’s main event having lost just twice since 2014. She puts a bow on her career, defeating every notable women’s fighter in the UFC’s history, with wins over Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm, Cris Cyborg, Valentina Shevchenko, and Miesha Tate.

Aldana stepped up to fight Nunes when the former champion, Peña, withdrew in May due to a rib injury. Aldana won her last two bouts via knockout heading into her title tilt, last falling in 2020 in a decision loss to Holly Holm.

Friday was not a good night to be affiliated with the Miami Heat.

The team got beaten handily for the second straight game at home by the Nuggets to fall behind 3-1 in the NBA Finals as the series shifts back to Denver for Game 5. During that loss, the team’s mascot Burnie decided it’d be fun to do a bit at midcourt with Conor McGregor, who was sitting courtside for the game.

Burnie came out with big boxing gloves to “fight” McGregor, with the former UFC champ scoring a one punch knockout (and then one more on the ground for good measure).

That punch was apparently a bit more than Burnie had bargained for, as the Athletic reported on Saturday that the man in the costume had to go to the hospital to get checked out and get some pain medication before being discharged — with Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald confirming.

The story notes he is doing well now, which is good, and I feel like the lesson here is to never ask a professional fighter to punch you for a bit, even if you’re in a large, cushioned outfit. Fighters tend to not be the best at pulling punches, and the result might be some injury added to insult.

Warning: This post contains a major spoiler for The White Lotus Season 2.

The White Lotus was supposed to be a one-off. The first season of the HBO show was a limited series whose cast could not reunite because they were tourists from all over the U.S. But creator Mike White found a way to do a Season 2 anyway: He turned it into an anthology series, with only two characters returning for more. There will be more, which means White has to draw up a wish-list of destinations. And he knows of at least one future stop.

“My dream would be to hit every continent, so yeah, this is like its own continent, basically,” White said while attending a festival in Sydney, Australia which the show’s biggest star Jennifer Coolidge, as per Deadline. “We kind of have to come to Australia if we keep going.”

He added, “It would be so fun. Obviously, there’s a huge wealth of talent here and the beauty is inarguable, so it feels like it checks all the boxes.”

Speaking of, Coolidge’s character, the unimaginably wealthy Tanya McQuoid, famously ate it at the end of Season 2. That’s doesn’t mean she can’t return. Indeed, at the festival they discussed the idea of a Tanya prequel series.

“I absolutely think that’s possible, we were just talking about that,” White told the crowd. “It’s a funny idea. And making Jennifer, you know, 20 years younger, that would be fun too. I think Jennifer’s like, ‘Sure, let’s do it!’”

Coolidge even knew where Tanya should wind up. “Austalia gets my vote,” she said.

So you might see Tanya again after all, this time down under. Meanwhile, Coolidge still wants to see one of the show’s characters suffer a fate worse than Tanya did.

(Via Deadline)

Niall Horan‘s third studio album, The Show, is proving to be a hit among the fans — whether they be day-one Directioners or simply new fans of Horan’s solo music. Songs like “Heaven” and “Never Grow Up” have become instant favorites in the pop world.

The album showcases some of Horan’s most personal songwriting yet, as he shares detailed accounts of mental health, love, and heartbreak. As the album is ranking high in the Horan universe, fans are wondering if they will be able to see Horan live.

Is Niall Horan going on tour for The Show?

Horan will, in fact, tour in support of The Show, however, not until early next year.

The tour will kick off in Belfast in February 2024, then arrive to Australia following a slew of European dates. US fans will be able to see him beginning in late May of 2024.

You can see the full list of tour dates below, and purchase tickets here.

2/21/24 – Belfast, UK @ SSE Arena Belfast
2/23/24 – Dublin, IE @ 3Arena
2/27/24 – Birmingham, UK @ Resorts World Arena
3/1/24 – London, UK @ OVO Arena Wembley
3/4/24 – Cardiff, UK @ Cardiff International Arena
3/5/24 – Manchester, UK @ AO Arena
3/7/24 – Antwerp, BE @ Lotto Arena
3/8/24 – Paris, FR @ Zénith
3/11/24 – Berlin, DE @ Mercedes-Benz Arena
3/12/24 – Copenhagen, DK @ Royal Arena
3/15/24 – Stockholm, SE @ Hovet Ice Hall
3/18/24 – Lodz, PL @ Atlas Arena
3/20/24 – Munich, DE @ Olympiahalle
3/21/24 – Milan, IT @ Mediolanum Forum
3/23/24 – Madrid, ES @ WiZink Center
3/26/24 – Düsseldorf, DE @ PSD Bank Dome
3/27/24 – Amsterdam, NL @ Ziggo Dome
4/26/24 – Auckland, New Zealand @ Spark Arena
4/28/24 – Brisbane, Australia @ Brisbane Entertainment Centre
5/1/24 – Sydney, Australia @ Quodos Bank Arena
5/3/24 – Melbourne, Australia @ Rod Laver Arena
5/29/24 – Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Hard Rock Live
5/31/24 – Tampa, FL @ MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
6/3/24 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
6/7/24 – Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
6/8/24 – Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live
6/11/24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Mann Center for the Performing Arts
6/14/24 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
6/15/24 – Mansfield, MA @ Xfinity Center
6/18/24 – Bridgeport, CT @ Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater
6/19/24 – Bangor, ME @ Maine Savings Amphitheater
6/21/24 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center
6/22/24 – Buffalo, NY @ Darien Lake Amphitheater
6/25/24 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center
6/26/24 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
6/28/24 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
7/7/24 – St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center
7/9/24 – Tinley Park, IL @ Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre
7/10/24 – Clarkston, MI @ Pine Knob Music Theatre
7/12/24 – Maryland Heights, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
7/16/24 – Kansas City, MO @ Starlight Theatre
7/17/24 – Rogers, AR @ Walmart AMP
7/19/24 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
7/20/24 – Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheatre
7/23/24 – Auburn, WA @ White River Amphitheatre
7/24/24 – Ridgefield, WA @ RV Inn Style Resorts Amphitheater
7/26/24 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
7/27/24 – Inglewood, CA @ The Kia Forum
7/30/24 – Chula Vista, CA @ North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre
7/31/24 – Phoenix, AZ @ Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre

The Show is out now via Capitol. Find more information here.

The Toronto Raptors have spent the last month meeting with a vast number of potential head coaching candidates after firing Nick Nurse following the season.

On Saturday, word broke from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that they had finally landed on a choice, with Memphis Grizzlies assistant Darko Rajakovic apparently finalizing a deal to become Toronto’s next head coach.

The Serbian coach has been an NBA assistant since 2014, spending the first five years of his career in Oklahoma City before stints in Phoenix and Memphis. He will take over a Toronto Raptors squad that has a ton of questions to answer this summer, as they are a candidate to potentially tear things down and rebuild, with Fred VanVleet a free agent and trade rumors continuing to swirl around OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam.

If they become sellers, then this figures to be a rebuilding job for Rajakovic with what one would expect to become a young team. If not and they choose to keep most of this core group together, he will have plenty of talent on the roster but will be tasked with figuring out how to make a lot of players with overlapping talents function together in a way they haven’t over the past two seasons.

Last week Donald Trump broke yet another record: He became the first U.S. president to be indicted on criminal charges once but twice. Congrats? This one was even a federal indictment, for his alleged mishandling of classified government documents. He could eventually become the first POTUS to wind up in the slammer — and should he be convicted of every one the charges of which he’s been accused, he would face a truly staggering amount of time in the clink.

On Friday, the day after news broke that Trump was indeed being indicted, again, the Department of Justice went and unsealed their case against him, making public the 37 charges against him. The Washington Post broke down how much jail time comes with each conviction:

1. 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information — 10 years each
2. 3 counts of withholding or concealing documents in a federal investigation — 20 years each
3. 2 counts of false statements — 5 years each
4. 1 count of conspiracy to obstruct justice — 20 years

That’s 400 years in prison — or, as the Post puts it, “longer than the U.S. has been a country.”

But that’s just one of the cases going to trial. Mediaite went and added 34 felony accounts he faces in the case by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who’s investigating the alleged hush money payments he made to Stormy Daniels. If convicted of all those, that’s another 136 years, bringing his tenure behind bars to 536 years.

Will Trump be convicted of all 71 counts? Probably not. Hell, he might not even be convicted of any (though this seems unlikely). But if he is, he won’t only have to campaign from the slammer, but if he wins he might have to serve from it, too. Luckily for him, he’d probably have to do so from one of those cushy country club prisons where he can rant to strangers like he does at Mar-a-Lago.

(Via The Post and Mediaite)

The Saturday Night Live writers may be on strike, but their actors are still delivering on the laughs. This week, Chloe Fineman took to social media to give us an uncanny imitation of a fictional pop star from a buzzy new show.

Though only one episode of Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s new series, The Idol, has aired so far, Fineman has her imitation of pop sensation Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) down to a T.

In a video shared by Fineman, the SNL actress dresses as Jocelyn, wearing a red lacy coat, and smoking cigarettes. In another clip, Fineman is seen wearing a black lingerie set and practicing choreography, recreating a scene from The Idol in which Jocelyn is practicing choreography for an upcoming music video. At one point, Fineman also recreates the shocking scene, in which The Weeknd’s character, a club owner and cult leader named Tedros, places red fabric over Jocelyn’s head, although Fineman’s recreation was less dark and more humorous.

The Weeknd caught wind of Fineman’s imitation, and simply replied with a series of crying emojis, implying that he couldn’t keep it together.

You can take a look at Fineman’s imitation above.

The Idol airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. EST on HBO. Episodes are available to stream on Max.

Rock, pop, and now, country — it’s safe to say that Avril Lavigne has done it all. Last night (June 9) at CMA Fest 2023, Miranda Lambert brought out Lavigne during her performance at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.

Before introducing Lavigne, Lambert said she was about to “make more badass happen right now.” She then noted her “new bestie” was about to arrive to the stage, welcoming Lavigne to the performance.

Lavigne and Lambert then performed “Kerosene,” which is one of Lambert’s earliest hits. Maintaining the throwback vibe, “Kerosene” smoothly transitioned to Lavigne’s 2002 breakthrough hit, “Sk8er Boi.”

In fan-shared footage, the audience is heard cheering with nostalgia after hearing the songs that made them fans from the beginning.

In recent years, Lambert has experimented with her sound, going from country, to folk, to rock. In an interview with CNN, she revealed she’s become more comfortable switching up her musical stylings.

“There were some moments where I was being pushed in directions that I just wasn’t comfortable,” Lambert said. “So I stood my ground, but as I’ve gotten older and more into the industry, I’ve kind of relaxed in that.”

You can see some clips of the performance above.

Avril Lavigne is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Donald Trump has long loved releasing propaganda videos that make him look both strong and attacked by powerful elites. He dropped a new one Saturday, featuring a two-minute montage of the former president looking powerful while a speech — about a talented person being built up by the public only be torn down — plays on the soundtrack. If the voice sounds familiar, that’s because it’s Matt Damon. If the monologue sounds familiar, it’s because it’s from the movie Air.

The speech comes from the home stretch of the docudrama, which details Nike successful attempts in 1984 to court the collegiate Michael Jordan with both money and a shoe designed in his honor. It’s not hard — if you remove all the details about Jordan’s life — for a narcissist with a martyr complex to see how the speech could be about him, too:

“People are going to build you up, and God are they going to, because when you’re great and new, we love you. Man, we’ll build you up into something that doesn’t even exist. You’re going to change the f*cking world. But you know what? Once they’ve built you as high as they possibly can, they’re gonna tear you back down. It’s the most predictable pattern. We build you into something that doesn’t exist, and that means you have to try to be that thing all day, every day. That’s how it works. And we do it again, and again, and again. And I’m going to tell you the truth. You’re going to be attacked, betrayed, exposed and humiliated. And you’d survive that. A lot of people can climb that mountain. It’s the way down that breaks them, ’cause that’s the moment when you are truly alone. And what would you do then? Can you summon the will to fight on, through all the pain, and rise again?”

In the film, this plays over images of the real-life Jordan, as he quickly becomes an NBA superstar, as he’s raked over the coals for matters now mostly forgotten by history, as his father is murdered, etc. In Trump’s ad, this plays over images of him looking mighty and defiant — as opposed to looking like a dingleberry, which happens way more often.

It’s not clear if the Air audio clip was properly licensed, but let’s assume that it wasn’t. Let’s also assume that neither Damon, a noted Democrat, nor the film’s director Ben Affleck, who also plays frequently barefooted Nike honcho Phil Knight, would appreciate that a guy who just got indicted — again — was using their work for his own benefit.

Being associated with Donald Trump rarely pays off. Just ask his Diet Coke guy.

Air now streams on Amazon Prime.

(Via The Daily Beast)

At long last, Janelle Monáe is back with new music. Yesterday (June 9), the “Lipstick Lover” artist released her fourth album, The Age Of Pleasure, which marks her first album in five years. Fans everywhere are raving over Monáe’s new liberating and unapologetically queer and sexual collection of music. Of course, with new music comes anticipation for a tour, and fans are dying to find out when they’ll get to see her live.

Is Janelle Monáe going on tour for The Age Of Pleasure?

Janelle Monáe will, in fact, be hitting the road for The Age Of Pleasure on a North American tour beginning this August. She will kick things off at the WAMU Theater in Seattle, will go until October, where she will wrap things up in Inglewood, California.

Fans are able to purchase tickets here. You can see the list of tour dates below.

08/30 – Seattle, WA @ WAMU Theater
08/31 – Vancouver, BC @ UBC – Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre
09/02 – Portland, OR @ RV Inn Style Resorts Amphitheater
09/06 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
09/07 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
09/09 – Kansas City, MO @ The Midland Theatre
09/11 – Minneapolis, MN @ Armory
09/13 – St. Louis, MO @ Stifel Theatre
09/14 – Chicago, IL @ Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom
09/17 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway
09/18 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met
09/20 – Montreal, QB @ Mtelus
09/21 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall
09/24 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem*
09/26 – New York City, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
09/28 – Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre
10/02 – Charlotte, NC @ Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre
10/03 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium
10/04 – Birmingham, AL @ Avondale Brewing Company
10/06 – Atlanta, GA @ Fox Theatre Atlanta
10/09 – Dallas, TX @ The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory
10/10 – Houston, TX @ Bayou Music Center
10/11 – Austin, TX @ Moody Amphitheater
10/15 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre
10/17 – San Francisco, CA @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
10/18 – Inglewood, CA @ YouTube Theater

The Age Of Pleasure is out now via Atlantic. Find more information here.

Janelle Monáe is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.