Previously on the Best and Worst of Raw: Nia Jax injured Kairi Sane, Charlotte Flair defeated Asuka, and the Street Profits and Viking Raiders played a dumb sport badly instead of wrestling each other. [checks notes] Wait, was this a re-run?

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for June 8, 2020.

Worst: Pardon The (Endless) Interruptions

A plea to WWE’s creative team on every brand: you have got to find another way for characters to naturally interact that isn’t one character interrupting another. “Promos” without interviewers are a curious concept anyway as you’d think there wouldn’t be a line of people waiting to monologue every Monday night, but they’re more curious still when so many of them only exist to set up an interruption. To put it another way, here’s the entire women’s division plot-line from Monday’s Raw, laid out end-to-end:

• Asuka is supposed to wrestle Charlotte Flair, but gets interrupted by Bayley and Sasha Banks
• Bayley and Sasha are interrupted by Charlotte Flair
• Charlotte is interrupted by The IIconics, who announce a Women’s Tag Team Championship match for Backlash
• a match happens and Charlotte’s about to win easily but Asuka tags herself in and steals the pin, proving yet again that two singles stars who hate each other and don’t get along can still flatly defeat your Tag Team Champions and the number one contenders to the Tag Team Championship at the same time, with no prep
• Charlotte sneak attacks Asuka, because Charlotte always wins, even when she loses
• Asuka vs. Charlotte Flair is supposed to happen, but Bayley and Sasha interrupt to sit at commentary
• Bayley and Sasha’s commentary is interrupted by a sneak attack from the IIconics
• Nia Jax interrupts the match
• Charlotte sneak attacks Asuka, because Charlotte always wins

To recap this one episode’s A-story, that’s seven interruptions, the champions losing (or, more accurately, not winning) a non-title match and Charlotte Flair completely dominating across two matches and one-upping Asuka twice with sneak attacks. This doesn’t do anything to promote the Women’s Tag Team Championship match on Sunday because the number one contenders were booked to lose a show-opening match on Raw, and it doesn’t do anything for the Raw Women’s Championship match on Sunday because Charlotte Flair’s the one standing tall, and she’s not even in the damn match. They didn’t even mention her losing the NXT Women’s Championship at In Your House until a backstage interview an hour and 45 minutes into the show, and when they did, she just kinda blew it off.

Having typed out that paragraph, who does this benefit? Not Asuka, who lost one match because she stopped paying attention and got beaten up by her own tag team partner after the other. Not the IIconics, who are “building momentum” for a title match on Sunday by tapping out clean to a team that’s not involved in the title match. Not Bayley and Sasha, who showed up to celebrate their four-day-old tag title reign only to immediately lose their first match as champions. Plus, they got beaten down by the team that lost in the opening match. Nia Jax is a non-factor until the closing moments of the main event, presumably to keep her from wheeling a wood chipper into the building and accidentally throwing her opponent into it. She never even gets into the ring, she just stands in the background while Charlotte celebrates.

So, to answer your question, “Charlotte.” It benefits Charlotte Flair, somehow. Charlotte Flair, who is not on the Backlash card, at the expense of Asuka, Bayley, Sasha Banks, Billie Kay, Peyton Royce, and Nia Jax, all of whom are. NXT and Smackdown will ALSO be used to glorify Charlotte. I’m not even complaining at this point, it’s just funny. Shawn Michaels, Hulk Hogan, John Cena, and Roman Reigns are watching Raw together somewhere and thinking, “Wow, they’re really cramming her down our throats, aren’t they?”

Best: There Are Some Bests

Really, there are. I’m just losing my patience with “interruption is interrupted by interruption” as a thing happening multiple times on every episode of every WWE show produced. If they didn’t happen so often, they might matter when they did. As it stands, you’re a fool if you walk to the ring by yourself to talk to the camera and don’t expect 1-7 people to butt in.

Asuka vs. Charlotte was good. Really good. Even Charlotte’s moonsault off the security railing almost connected flush, which has kinda started to feel like she’s wearing a blindfold at a bowling alley and trying to roll a strike. They’ve got incredible chemistry with one another, and Charlotte’s the exact right amount of confident and naturally talented to have a legend like Asuka keep her focused and playing the best version of herself. The three-brand-wide Charlotte push is borderline bewildering and I hate getting 99% of the way through a banger 20-minute main event only to Raw all over it, but I guess even that’s designed to make me want to blame Nia. And since WWE’s beaten me into whataboutist insanity, I’m happy they’re doing wrestling between the hacky story stuff instead of running the exact same program but keeping the matches between three minutes and 90 seconds. They did that for YEARS.

Outside of that match, Bayley’s been on a different level of comedic obnoxiousness lately, so hearing her sneer and cackle her way through commentary while sounding EXACTLY like a middle-schooler who’d try to get Stephanie Tanner to be coo and smoke cigarettes is delightful. And you guys know I approve of anything that gets the IIconics on television and doing something. The amount of Billie Kay slander I see on Al Gore’s internet continues to disappoint me.

TL;DR: I really like (most of) these performers and I like watching them work, I just wish they had some better and more uncommon, actually character-based stories and situations to work with. There are more emotions and plots out there than “somebody’s jealous,” and more interesting physicality for pro wrestlers working 52+ shows a year than interruptions, run-ins, disqualifications, and sneak attacks.

Study question: Remember when Bianca Belair debuted on Raw? They sure had some great ideas ready to go for that, huh?

Worst: Dominick Is Definitely The Third Disciple

Speaking of interruptions, Rey Mysterio Facetimes in with a followup to his retirement promo from last week and gets interrupted by Seth Rollins. Why Mysterio needed a followup interview when the only point he made in the first one was, “I don’t know if I’m going to retire and I’ll probably be back soon,” is beyond me. Rollins invites them to Raw again, and Rey promises that he’s not going to wait until the end of the match to do the 619, he’s going to do it as soon as the bell rings. I love that Seth Rollins tried to force Rey’s retirement and tried to straight up murder him on live television by pushing the corner of the ring steps into his brain through his eye socket, and Rey’s heated response is, “I can’t wait until the match officially begins, I’m going to stay within the parameters of the rules and then swing around in the ropes to bop you in the forehead with my shins you son of a bitch.”

Let’s hope Rollins is working from the Hollywood Hogan David Flair playbook and has secretly already welcomed his rival’s son into his wrestling gang, because his current henchmen really could use some work. Remember when Buddy Murphy was supposed to be the perfect antithesis to Aleister Black, and always felt one good series of moves away from defeating him? Now Black’s pinning him easily a couple of minutes into a match off transition moves. Murphy didn’t even need to get with SIGNATURES to lose.

The heels “get their heat back” after the match, but much like the promo interruptions it’d probably be more effective if we hadn’t just watched them get completely crunched. I can’t remember a time when I saw somebody lose a match and attack their opponent afterward to “stand tall” and thought, “wow, maybe THEY really won! I can’t wait to see this settled in a rematch!” Theory and Murphy beat Carrillo and Black last week and beat them up after the match, so this week they lose the same match, and do more or less the same post-match attack. That “wins and losses matter” thing AEW likes to push is more of a catchphrase than anything, but the subtle truth is that they really are the only thing that matter. They construct the sport that provides foundational support to your medium of storytelling. Paying attention to wrestling characters without paying equal attention to wrestling matches (and vice versa) is like painting without paint. You can find some other goop to throw on the canvas and make it LOOK like paint, but wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot nicer to have some fucking paint?

Shout-out to Austin Theory, though. That dude leveraged a global pandemic to elevate his spot in WWE from “NXT special guest jobber” to “high-ranking henchman who has been a part of two heel factions on Raw” in just three months. It’s like if Raul Mendoza got kidnapped by luchadores in the Full Sail parking lot in March and was a two-time Intercontinental Champion by June. Scab, young man, scab.

Worst: Dick Move, Apollo

Last week, new United States Champion Apollo Crews thanked Kevin Owens for his recent assistance against Los Ingobernables de Central Florida by giving him the first shot at the title. That match ended with (SURPRISE) an interruption and turned into a tag team match. Player. So this week, instead of, you know, giving Kevin Owens the match he was promised, Apollo shows up like, “congratulations, Kevin, I got you a spot in a triple threat number one contender match where the other two guys are the tag team we’ve been feuding with. No, I can’t help you, I’m gonna walk straight to the back and stand beside a flat screen television so I can look over my shoulder and watch it. HAVE FUN ON YOUR OWN, BYEEEE.” Dick move, Apollo.

Left out there on his own, Owens gets beaten down 2-on-1 until the heels have a Malfunction At The Junction — some junctions only seem to service constant malfunctions — and start half-assedly fighting each other as well. Dude fights from underneath the ENTIRE MATCH only to finally hit a finisher on one of them, get tossed out of the ring by the other, and lose. Again, I feel like Crews could’ve at least hung out at ringside and provided moral support while the only guy on the roster who gives a shit about him tryies to win a handicap match for an opportunity he was already promised. Babyfaces are crazy, y’all.

Worst: Wrestling Is Also An Olympic Event, You Guys

The Street Profits and The Viking Raiders are feuding over the Raw Tag Team Championship in a series of sporting events that have nothing to do with wrestling or the Raw Tag Team Championship. So far they’ve played basketball, tossed axes, golfed, and bowled. Now they’ve decided to settle things once and for all with an OLYMPIC DECATHLON, not stopping for even a second to think it could end 5-5 and solve nothing. Odd numbers, guys. This is why you don’t see any “best of six series.”

Events include sword fighting, STICK fighting (which is like sword fighting, but instead of losing by dying you just fall into some milk), a wrestling entrance theme dance-off, a turkey leg eating contest, and a pole vault filmed in extreme close-ups. I’d make a joke about how obviously that disguises the fact that nobody in the group can pole vault, but this is the show where getting pushed into the security railing and back requires 11 jump cuts, so maybe the camera men just have bad eyesight.

Win, Lose, Or Drew

Somewhere in the middle of the episode, MVP decides he’s going to interview his own wrestler, Bobby Lashley, on his themed in-universe pro wrestling talk show. With Christian stopping in to do “The Peep Show,” it’s a good week for concepts from 15 years ago. Maybe next week we can have Charlotte Flair confront Asuka on Carlito’s Cabana.

Anyway, the Drew McIntyre vs. Bobby Lashley story continues like you’d expect. So far all we’ve really gotten is that MVP has replaced Lana as Lashley’s wife and got him to get serious about his wrestling career by doing a bunch of full nelsons. WWE Champ McIntyre is like, “YEAH, FULL NELSON ME, LET’S DO THE DEAL,” presumably because he wants regular competition that isn’t Brock Lesnar or the Big Show. Lashley won’t stop Masterlocking folks, McIntyre won’t stop kicking MVP in the face for literally any reason that pops into his head, and they’re going to fight about it at Backlashley.

The WWE Championship plot and the Raw Tag Team Championship Jerkoff Competition come together in the main event, when McIntyre understandably thinks the Viking Raiders are cool and enlists them as backup and tag team partners against Lashley and MVP. They have a two-on-two tag team match with the Street Profits watching, which ends in the Vikings … [checks notes again] tapping out and losing. Nothing says “we are the best tag team in the world” by skipping work to bowl and golf and then losing the first match you’ve had in like two months to a singles star and his manager.

The Profits seem to be out there so someone can hold Lashley’s full nelson in place so it can get broken up b a Claymore. Sorry for everything, tag team division!

The segments here aren’t notably bad in that “Lashley’s sisters” kind of way and McIntyre vs. Lashley at Backlash might rip, but the Raw content’s still pretty uninspired. I’m no expert, but I’d recommend giving your tag teams something more productive to do than play putt-putt and stooge for more important characters, but I guess a history of decisions like that is a lot of why we are where we are. As long as Lana doesn’t drag poor Rusev back into this feud, I think it’ll be all right.

Worst: And Finally, The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever

When Tom Phillips intros any Edge vs. Randy Orton content on the episode, he refers to it as, “what many are calling the greatest wrestling match ever.” “What many are calling” is some Donald Trump shit. Who is “many?” Do you mean the Raw announce team, the Smackdown announce team, and Charly Caruso? Because you guys are the ones promoting it like this. On an internet with millions of wrestling fans and a true rainbow of diverse, subjective opinions, I can’t imagine one person on the whole damn earth who’d see Randy Orton vs. Edge announced for Backlash and think, “a 45-minute violent brawl at WrestleMania was one thing, but a standard wrestling match between a guy who hasn’t wrestled a one-on-one match in nine years and the slow stomps and even slower chinlocks of Randy Orton? This is going to be the best pure wrestling match in history.” Having Kurt Angle send in this hostage video doesn’t make it any more legitimate.

You’ve got to admire WWE’s dedication to putting over their own bullshit, though. They had Charly say with her whole chest that Edge vs. Randy Orton will be the greatest wrestling match ever, and when everybody snickered about it they were like, “no, it’s the greatest wrestling match ever, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle say so, WHO ARE YOU TO DOUBT THEM? SHUT UP, IS WHAT!” The marketing strategy is asking people to get their hopes up and be wildly optimistic about a match between 40-year olds in the middle of a June WWE pay-per-view in the middle of a global pandemic. I guess the honesty of, “a watchable match, God willing, and Edge doesn’t hurt himself,” doesn’t put butts in seats. Although right now there are no butts, and even if they were, WWE’s not giving them seats.

Edge is a guest on Christian’s Peep Show, as WWE has brought Christian peep shows out of Lynchburg Virginia weekends and into your home. Christian gives Edge the kind of tough love pep talk you can only get from your best friend and pretend brother who used to be in a vampire cult with you and spent the prime of his career smushing your head between two chairs. They’re interrupted by Randy Orton, who appears on the video screen despite a pre-commercial interview where he asks how many guests are on The Peep Show and twice openly implies that he’s going to go out there and physically interrupt them. I guess 15 promo interruptions instead of 14 would’ve been overkill.

As a positive, it’s always good to see Christian. I was always more of a Christian fan than an Edge fan. I just preferred his wrestling and his whole vibe. I’m not confident in Backlash — can you blame me? — but the perverse novelty of “greatest wrestling match ever” promotion at the expense of everything else on the card, which includes WWE and Universal Championship matches and happens two days after a Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles Intercontinental Championship tournament final, makes it worth checking out. They’ve got to have SOMETHING planned to keep pushing the match concept like this, don’t they? Would they just bait-and-switch us with hyperbole because the only booking idea they have right now is, “say it’s better than it is?” Why am I asking questions I already know the answers to?

Anyway, here’s another vote for, “Orton opens the match by smashing Edge in the face with a chair, causing a disqualification in the opening seconds.” There’s no way in God’s green Hell Randy Orton says he’s going to have a great wrestling match, means it, and then goes out and does it.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

cyniclone

The Charlotte Hornets, in a last-gasp effort to be included when the NBA season resumes, have changed their name to the Charlotte Flairs. They’ve already been given a NBA Finals series against the Lakers.

Birdman

Christian gently shoving over the chair to convey anger was the most Canadian thing ever

Mr. Bliss

Vince trying decide who will take the title off Asuka:

Jae-Su

Here’s your problem…

EvilDucky

An open letter to WWE: PUT CHRISTIAN IN THE HALL OF FAME YOU COWARDS

Arrdub

Who knew flipping that tire was going to be the turning point in Lashley’s career?

troi

I feel like the WWE Womens Division is single highhandedly keeping the Orlando leather pants industry alive

favoritenobody

I know people have to have monikers and whatnot, but shouldn’t they stop calling Nia Jax an irresistible force seeing as she’s been resisted quite a few times?

AJ Dusman

WWE programming has more Flair than an employee at Chotchkie’s.

notJames

We in the WWF think that you, the audience, are quite frankly tired of having your intelligence insulted — Vince McMahon, 1997

New pitch: instead of “Raw Talk,” do a Raw post-show that’s just the same, entire episode of Raw from the crowd’s perspective. At least put an alternate version with picture-in-picture on the Network. Do I want to see Edge and Randy Orton argue among themselves about who will or won’t have the greatest match ever, or do I want to hea what the IIconics are saying and then go watch Eric Bugenhagen and Shotzi Blackheart dance to Asuka’s music?

That’s what I thought.

Anyway, that does it for another episode of The Best and Worst of Quarantine Raw. Thanks as always for reading and supporting us. You can help us out tremendously right now by sharing the column on social media, as well as dropping down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of the show. Oh, and make sure you’re here this weekend for our Backlash open discussion thread, live results, news, and more. I will keep trying to watch these and say something constructive about them, and I can’t wait to write 4,000 words on why I was wrong to doubt the Greatest Wrestling Match Ever.

See you this weekend!

As more and more athletes and musicians add their voices to the chorus calling for change this week, one of those voices falls under both categories. NBA star Damian Lillard — also known as Dame D.O.L.L.A. when he’s on the mic — shared a new song, titled “Blacklist,” addressing the ongoing calls for police reform and denouncing white supremacy. The song appeared today on his SoundCloud, as Dame continued to speak out against injustice on his social media.

“As a brother with a good heart, I say, ‘F ck You’ if you racist / Or you white and you quiet, you disabling the changes,” he snaps to begin the track. However, he isn’t shy about facing the consequences his rhymes could bring. “F*ck being famous, tired of watching us complaining.” As the track builds, he continues to point out the hypocrisy of police who protect the “bad apples,” calls out Donald Trump for his inflammatory rhetoric, and compares himself to Muhammad Ali and Tommy Smith — Black athletes who voiced their concerns despite backlash.

Dame already experienced something of a backlash himself after declaring that he wouldn’t play in a truncated season should the NBA return post COVID-19 because his team wouldn’t have a chance to play for a title.

Listen to Dame D.O.L.L.A.’s “Blacklist” above.

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DaBaby is on top of the world right now, as his Roddy Ricch-featuring single “Rockstar” has climbed to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. This is DaBaby’s first time having a No. 1 song, and in light of that, he has taken a moment to reflect on where he came from to get to this point.

Sharing the top ten of the chart he currently leads, DaBaby offered a simple, “I came from nothing.” He then elaborated in a follow-up tweet, “Nah fr, I really came from nothing. I’m not perfect at all but look, I done been through it all, and still got PLENTY more to go through. If you willing to go through it with me, grab my hand let’s go. If not, F*CK YA. I wish you the best.”

He shared a similarly spirited message before the news that he went No. 1, tweeting, “I love being the under dog, something about climbing up out the mud make them victory’s bigger.” After that, he offered a peek at his future plans: “Ima finish this run off successfully, reach another milestone & take some much needed time off to work on self-discipline, mental health, physical health, loving on my kids/family & becoming a better person overall. Im only tweeting this so I can look back n say ‘I did dat!’

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

This past weekend, NASCAR’s fanless season continued in Atlanta, but prior to the race they made a rare statement in the realm of social issues, as they played a video featuring a number of their high profile drivers speaking on the need to listen and learn about racial inequality and police brutality.

That message was prompted by the week-plus of protests that have been going on nationwide since the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police in Minneapolis and Louisville. For a sport like NASCAR to feel it necessary to make such a video message shows the impact the Black Lives Matter movement is having, but there is still a long way for the sport to go in terms of embracing diversity.

There is one Black driver in NASCAR, Bubba Wallace, and as such he has been quite busy over the last week with interviews and questions about what it’s like to be the lone Black man in a sport that has long lacked much in the way of diversity. Wallace has handled that responsibility with incredible tact, speaking with numerous outlets on the matter and NASCAR’s response in recent days. On Monday, he joined CNN’s Don Lemon for one of those discussions, and noted that he’s felt NASCAR’s leadership has done well and been very willing to listen to him. However, he hopes that continues and, when asked what the next step he thinks the sport should take is, he pointed out that confederate flags should no longer be allowed to fly at races.

Wallace makes the point that no one should come to races and feel uncomfortable or like they don’t belong, and for Black Americans, the confederate flag is a symbol of exactly that, exclusion and a place they don’t belong and aren’t wanted. While there were plenty of NASCAR fans that appreciated the message on Sunday, there was also backlash from, what is very possibly, just a vocal minority. What happens next will be fascinating as NASCAR will either move forward without putting more into action, alienating those like Wallace who feel they’re committed to making real change and want to help with the net steps, or their message will actually mean what they said and they’ll listen and implement policies like what Bubba expresses here. If they do the latter, there will be more backlash and anger from some, but if NASCAR is serious about expanding its footprint and becoming more progressive on issues of race, they’ll have to leave some folks behind to do so.

Josh Trank has already been through a protracted studio battle with 20th Century Fox (for Fantastic Four), so one might imagine that bad movie reviews might not feel as jarring in comparison. That assumption would be correct, and Trank is ready to reckon with those Capone reviews while letting them roll off his back. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, he sifts through the aftermath of a less-than-impressive VOD take ($2.5 million held up to a $20 million budget) and is simply happy that people are having strong reactions.

The film, which sits at 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, led our own Vince Mancini to declare, “Context is not the enemy.” Notably, there’s a scene where Tom Hardy, as the post-prison Al Capone, defecates in his own pants. But Trank is “very happy with the outcome,” because some viewers love what other viewers hate. Trank continued:

“That’s perfectly fine because everything in this movie is up front and center for you to see. Nothing is being hidden. It’s right there. But I’m glad that what people are reacting to are the most extreme elements of the movie. It’s getting a reaction. If you hate this movie, that’s perfectly fine because you’re reacting to something that’s pretty real.”

As long as people are paying attention, in other words, that’s better than being ignored, according to Trank. It’s not a new idea by any means, but it does seem useful right now when movies are struggling in the face of pandemic chaos. One might argue, though, that movies like Capone are much better off heading to streaming services than, as Vertical Entertainment did, forging out to VOD-land unattended. With The Last Days Of American Crime earning 0% positive reviews but still sitting atop the Netflix charts, there’s certainly an audience for terrible movies. 2020 isn’t getting any less weird.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

After previously postponing the event, Barcelona’s premier festival Primavera Sound announced they were canceling this summer’s festival in light of the pandemic. Primavera Sound was slated to celebrate their 20th year this summer and had even planned an LA debut in September. Instead of holding the festivals, Primavera Sound instead commemorated two decades as an organization by airing past performances. But the festival has also set their sights on the future: Primavera Sound has already confirmed its full lineup for 2021.

Now scheduled for June 2021, Primavera Sound’s first wave of lineup announcements was led by Gorillaz, Tame Impala, Charli XCX, Pavement, and The Strokes. Now, the fest has expanded on their original announcement and added a massive amount of artists to its bill. Taking place at Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona from June 2 to 6, Primavera Sound will feature performances by artists like Kehlani, Slowthai, Kurt Vile, Khruangbin, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, and more.

While the festival added a number of acts, a few musicians who were originally booked for 2020 don’t appear on the new lineup. Lana Del Rey, King Princess, Kacey Musgraves, and Brittany Howard were slated to play this summer, but don’t appear on the 2021 lineup.

Tickets for Primavera Sound are available starting 6/11, with all 2020 day tickets remaining valid for next summer’s festival. Find tickets here.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Over the weekend, Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner, along with husband Joe Jonas, attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles. “No justice, no peace,” she wrote on Instagram, where she responded to some of her follower’s comments, including one who asked why she was still protesting the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, after arrests have been made. “I mean they’ve been arrested and charge [sic] with murder so there [is] justice soooooo can we have peace now?” they wrote.

Turner wrote back:

“This isn’t just about those 4 cops, this is about Breonna Taylor, this is about Trayvon Martin, this is about Eric Garner, this is about the systemic racism that black people have faced for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is about changing the system. Justice will be done when society reflects our beliefs that we are all equal. Until then, there should be no peace.”

Well said.

In the days prior to the protest, Turner showed her support for the Black Lives Matter movement. “My heart is heavy. I stand in solidarity with those speaking out against racism and fighting for justice and equality. Silence is not an option,” she wrote. “While my voice is not one that needs to be heard, I want to highlight some of those we should listen to,” including Colin Kaepernick, Tamika D. Mallory, and Rachel Elizabeth Cargle.

One of the more unusual angles in WWE in recent memory belonged to three-time tag team champion Erick Rowan and a cage covered in burlap. From November 2019 until February 2020, Rowan would carry this mysterious cage to the ring, occasionally letting jobbers peak inside and/or be attacked by whatever was in there. Then, it was revealed in March that there was none other than a big, extremely fake-looking spider inside of it.

Alas, Drew McIntyre squashed the cage — and presumably the fake spider inside of it — on one of Raw’s final pre-pandemic episodes, and shortly thereafter, Rowan was released. He’s kept a low profile since, rebranding himself as Erick Redbeard, but otherwise he’s been quiet. That changed recently when he appeared on the Lewis Nicholls Show to discuss his wrestling career, and most importantly, just what his thoughts were on his final angle:

“I had the cage thing, whatever that was, but it kept me on television. Good or bad, it kept me on, and that’s what I always say to people; good or bad, you try to make the best you can with it. Sometimes, you can make good out of it, but sometimes, the writing is the writing, and I don’t know what happened. I really don’t.

I put stuff in there, just in case somebody peeked through. You never know if something is going to fall out. Nobody else told me to do it, but I put stuff in there just in case. One week I didn’t have anything, so I took a T-shirt and some duct tape and made a stuffed animal. Just stupid things so if someone looked through it, there was some sort of shape. I didn’t know what was going to be in there.”

When asked if he was disappointed in the payoff of the angle, Rowan simply said, “I plead the fifth.”

Most of the major music festivals around the world have been either canceled or postponed for months now. That said, Lollapalooza has stood as one of the final holdouts, as they had yet to announce a delay or cancelation. Now, though, the matter is out of their hands: The City of Chicago announced today that Lollapalooza (along with a host of other events scheduled for this summer) will no longer be allowed to go on as planned.

The festival organizers also shared a statement about the cancelation, writing, “We wish we could bring Lollapalooza to Grant Park again this year, but we understand why things can’t move forward as planned. The health and safety of our fans, artists, partners, staff and community is always our highest priority. Rest assured, we will be working hard behind the scenes to deliver Chicago a spectacular celebration of Lollapalooza’s 30th Anniversary in the summer of 2021, and we can’t wait to celebrate with you. It’s difficult to imagine summer without our annual weekend together, sharing the undeniable energy generated when live music and our incredible community of fans unite.”

The message goes on to note that between July 30 and August 2, Lollapalooza will host a livestream event that will include live performances, archival sets, and more.

Before this, the closest Lollapalooza had come to changing their 2020 plans was delaying the announcement of this year’s lineup.