Today, KFC will be testing a “bigger, better, and more premium” chicken sandwich across Orlando. What exactly does “more premium” mean? Well, that it’s capable of competing with Popeyes’ viral chicken sandwich from last year … KFC hopes. It’s not every day that a chicken chain drops a brand new menu staple as essential as the chicken sandwich — it’s as if McDonald’s just decided they wanted to do a refresh on the Quarter Pounder — and it’s even rarer when a brand is this honest about why they’re doing it.

“We wanted a chicken sandwich that really lives up to our legacy as the fried chicken experts and let’s face it, ours wasn’t the one to beat,” said KFC U.S. chief marketing officer Andrea Zahumensky, “We knew an upgrade was necessary, so we painstakingly selected each ingredient to create a bigger, better, and more premium chicken sandwich than ever. I think we’ve unlocked a chicken sandwich that won’t just compete — it’ll win with fried chicken lovers everywhere.”

Will it catch on? That remains to be seen!

According to Orlando Weekly, the new sandwich is 20 percent larger than KFC’s current Crispy Colonel sandwich, offered in spicy and non-spicy iterations, is double-breaded for an extra crunchy and crispy bite — which seems catered to the ASMR crowd when the sandwich inevitably appears in an online review on YouTube — and served on a brand new buttered brioche bun with thick pickles and the Colonel’s real mayo spread.

Before dropping to the public in Orlando, the first taste of the sandwich was delivered to the frontline workers chronicled in Orlando Sentinel‘s Pandemic Portraits, which included teachers, auto mechanics, police officers, and other essential workers on the frontline of the city’s coronavirus response.

The sandwich is now available throughout the Orlando area for just $3.99 a la carte or $6.99 as a meal, which is a small price to pay and the perfect option for you to have delivered to your door for dinner. According to Food & Wine, you can be one of the first to try KFC’s new chicken sandwich at the following 15 locations:

• 16800 W New Hwy 441
• 6217 International Road
• 502 S Alafaya Trail
• 5200 S John Young Parkway
• 4466 Pleasant Hill Road
• 3601 S Orlando Drive
• 2882 N Hiawassee Road
• 1130 W Osceola Parkway
• 5780 Central Florida Parkway
• 11302 S Orange Blossom Trail
• 510 U.S. Hwy 27
• 5680 W US Highway 192
• 250 Aloma Avenue
• 10825 E Colonial Drive
• 3009 W Colonial Drive

If KFC takes the crown, will anyone even care? Or are big viral chicken moments just a thing of the past now?

(Via Orlando Weekly)

Deonna Purrazzo was one of many WWE Superstars cut from the company last month, and one of the few who openly said she had been thinking about asking for her release before that. Purrazzo has described how she felt misused and creatively frustrated in NXT, and in a new interview with The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast, talked about why she thinks WWE signed her in the first place: mainly so she wouldn’t sign somewhere else.

Purrazzo was one of the wrestlers announced for All In, the pay-per-view that preceded that creation of All Elite Wrestling, in 2018, but had to pull out of the show when she was signed by WWE. Purrazzo says that she “one hundred percent” thinks WWE signed her because of that All In announcement:

This culminated in, ‘She’s going to go somewhere else and do something good with other people, so we’re going to bring her here.’ If they had done something with me, then that would have been fine. But I feel that in the last year or two with AEW, [WWE] tended to be hoarding.

Purrazzo explained she thinks she suffered from so many other women coming to WWE from the indies around the time she signed with the company. She wasn’t the only person unhappy in this environment, and then when the layoffs came around, “it was the people voicing frustration and maybe the idea that they didn’t want to be here anymore if nothing was going to happen.”

Now that she’s out of WWE, Purrazzo says she doesn’t know if pulling out of All In has ruled out a possible future in AEW:

I don’t know. I feel like there was probably some, ‘Oh, that sucks’ because I committed to doing All In and I actually tried to push my WWE signing date back so I could still do All In. But WWE wasn’t having it, I have to pick and choose those battles, but I don’t think it affected anyone negatively. That’s not anything I’ve heard or has stopped me from being friendly with people that work for AEW.

Purrazzo doesn’t know yet where she’ll end up next, but says “It’s going to be interesting to see those negotiations and see where I land.”

Carly Rae Jepsen is fresh off releasing Dedicated Side B, but she might have even more fresh material in the pipeline: She recently revealed that she (along with songwriting collaborator and guitarist Tavish Crowe) has made a quarantine album.

During an appearance on the Switched On Pop podcast, at the tail-end of the conversation (around the 39:10 mark), she spoke about the record, saying, “Tavish and I have already made an entire quarantine album, and it’s very different, it’s kind of fun! We had to do it around Zoom or things like that so it’s been like a challenge, but a really fun one! You kind of write differently that way. You have more time to have space in between the decisions you’re making and more time to kind of be away from the song for a minute, so I find it to be a whole new style of going at it, and I really like it.”

Of course, there are positives and negatives to being an artist during quarantine. Some are out of work, and some (like Rosalía and Charli XCX) have spoken about a pressure they feel to be productive during these times. That said, great works that musicians can be proud of have been released during this time (like Charli’s How I’m Feeling Now). Jepsen spoke positively about the quarantine album-making process, so hopefully that came from a positive space and hopefully fans get to hear it in the near future.

Listen to the full Switched On Pop episode below.

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

It’s almost a week later, and Zack Snyder‘s surprise announcement that HBO Max will officially “Release the Snyder Cut” in 2021 is still reverberating across the fandom and streaming worlds.

In a new interview with Business Insider, HBO Max Content Chief Kevin Reilly opens up about the decision to turn the fabled cut of Justice League into a reality, and how it fits into the streaming service’s aggressive content strategy of “closing deals every week.” According to Reilly, conversations about the Snyder Cut had been happening in secret for a while, but there was a significant amount of red tape involved. In fact, there was a chance that the decision couldn’t be ready before HBO Max launched.

I forget when Zack and Deborah [Snyder] first gave us the sense of where they were heading, but even from that meeting, me and my team felt it was something we really wanted to do. There were a lot of issues involved to figure out how we could deliver on his vision, and a myriad of legal issues. We’ve been sitting on this for quite some time but working on it. It was obviously a secret project given the high level of interest, but we were chipping away at it piece by piece. There was some strategy but also some serendipity in how we got over the hurdle of some of those issues just before the launch [of Max].

Reilly also reiterated HBO Max’s commitment to DC Comics properties like Justice League Dark from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Greg Berlanti’s upcoming Green Lantern series. On top of that, the content chief says they’re still sitting on a couple of “headline grabbers,” which could be good news for fans who are feverishly hoping to see David Ayer’s director cut of Suicide Squad. Much like the Snyder Cut, the Ayer Cut could also be tossed together quickly and at a minimal cost, which would help HBO Max fill a gap in content thanks to production delays from the current pandemic. Plus the announcement would almost definitely grab headlines.

(Via Business Insider)

This Wednesday, Matt Riddle is facing his former substitute tag team partner Timothy Thatcher in a “cage fight” on NXT. Thatcher debuted to replace Pete Dunne, who had won the NXT Tag Team Championship with Riddle after they won the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, and who has been unable to travel to the US since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down travel. After Riddle and Thatcher lost the Tag Titles to Imperium, they pivoted into a brief one-on-one feud, but Wednesday’s match should be the end of that. It may also be the end of Matt Riddle’s NXT career.

As reported by the Wrestling Observer, if the Cage Fight isn’t Riddle’s farewell to NXT, it will at least be the setup for a farewell to happen soon. According to them, the Original Bro’s Main Roster debut should be coming very soon.

PWInsider says they’ve confirmed with multiple sources that Matt Riddle will join the Smackdown roster, and should debut on that show soon. That means he won’t be on the same show as Brock Lesnar, who he’s been wanting to fight for a long time (Brock seems far less interested), but it will give him a chance to have matches with some of the best in-ring talents in the business, like Daniel Bryan, Cesaro, and the newly returned Drew Gulak.

When Georgia’s governor allowed for restaurants and other businesses to re-open earlier this month, the understanding was that those businesses would follow strict safety guidelines to prevent a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. However, as we’ve seen in other states that pushed to re-open businesses, the risks weren’t worth the rewards — especially for 2 Chainz, whose Escobar Restaurant was ordered to close by Georgia authorities after throwing a raucous party for Memorial Day.

According to TMZ, Georgia State Police shut the restaurant down after noticing “the location was rather loud, busy, and occupied to be operating as a restaurant at that time of night.” The restaurant’s Instagram account features videos showing that it was packed to capacity with a line out front, as attendees to its Memorial Day Weekend party danced, smoked hookah, and ordered bottle service. The police spoke to the manager, advising them that the restaurant was “violating executive orders regarding protocol issued due to COVID-19.”

2 Chainz initially received a backlash to the announcement he was planning to re-open Escobar, prompting him to reconsider and pass out meals to the homeless instead. However, the 95% decrease in business forced Chainz and his business partner to furlough 80% of their staff.

It appears 2 Chainz was amenable to re-opening after Georgia issued new guidelines allowing restaurants to re-open, limiting dine-in service to 10 patrons per table and per 300 square feet of public space. Unfortunately, the restaurant’s holiday party plan wasn’t conducive to social distancing, causing the shutdown and likely a lot more trouble than it was worth.

You can see photos and videos on Escobar’s Instagram Story.

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Drew McIntyre has held the WWE Championship for 51 days (or 61 days, depending on if you count from the day his WrestleMania match was taped or when it aired). In that time, he’s successfully defended his title against the Big Show, Andrade and Seth Rollins, and is currently gearing up for his championship match against Bobby Lashley at Payback on June 14. But his name keeps ending up in one loosely WWE-affiliated athlete’s mouth: Tyson Fury.

The Gypsy King and the Scottish Psychopath exchanged words via social media back in April, and everyone presumably figured that would be the end of it. But in a new interview with BT Sport, Fury not only talked up McIntyre again — he said he wanted a WWE Championship match in the U.K.:

“I’m a big, big fan. He’s absolutely in fantastic shape. A real good-looking fella. He may be able to teach me a few beauty tips and a few wrestling moves, who knows? But I did see him talking about a big British fight. For sure, if WWE comes to the United Kingdom and they want a massive pay-per-view event, then look no further than the Gypsy King vs. Drew McIntyre for the WWE belt.”

While Fury might want a championship match, it’s unlikely to happen in the United Kingdom any time soon: WWE has been canceling or rescheduling all their international tours for 2020, including a European trek that would’ve been going on this month.

Kevin Smith’s a few years out from the massive heart attack that prompted his lifestyle overhaul, including a dramatic weight loss. Yet since many people are finding it hard to curb food cravings during these isolating times, he’s opening up on that continued struggle and more. The Clerks filmmaker spoke with the Hollywood Reporter to reveal how he let things slide — as one does in quarantine — for a few weeks before realizing that he needed to regroup with discipline to avoid returning to heart-attack city.

A measured approach with occasional vegan ice cream binges appears to be the groove that Smith has settled into, but not before he imagined what it would be like to emerge from quarantine like the next coming of The Eternals‘ Kumail Nanjiani. You know, all ripped and wearing a hockey jersey as a bandanna along with, of course, jorts. Wouldn’t that be something? Smith says he briefly considered this possibility and then thought better of the daydream:

There was, like, one day where I was like, “You know, you could totally pour yourself into a regimen and f*cking build serious muscle and then just stay off the internet for a while, and then when we’re released into the real world, just rock ’em with these f*cking pictures!” But, you know, I’m not in a Marvel movie.

It’d certainly be a transformation to behold, but man, these sorts of bodybuilding regimes are difficult to sustain. Just ask Kumail, who appears to be over the body-talk in favor of breaking his silence on nerd-loincloth and fantasy-swashbuckler movies.

On Smith’s part, his entire quarantine chat with Hollywood Reporter is worth checking out. He admits to realizing that “I must be an attention whore at heart,” which is a more self-aware state than a lot of people hold these days. He’s looking forward to getting back on stage and in cinemas, but for now, you can read the rest of the piece here.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

The Last Dance spent some time on the Dream Team, with a major emphasis on how his time in Barcelona served as Michael Jordan taking the baton from Larry Bird and Magic Johnson as the face of the NBA. There was also, as is oftentimes the case with Dream Team retrospectives, a little time set aside on Isiah Thomas not making the squad.

In the doc, Jordan made it clear that he had nothing to do with Thomas missing out on the Dream Team, despite the fact that Thomas was one of the best players in the world at his position. Jordan went as far as to say “it was insinuated that I was asking about him, but I never threw his name in there,” a claim that raised a number of eyebrows, if only because it just didn’t sound right for a number of people.

The documentary ended last Sunday, while the Dream Team episode aired several weeks ago. But in recent days, some old audio has cast doubts on Jordan’s claims from the doc. Jordan spoke to Jack McCallum for his 2012 book, Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever, and in McCallum’s new podcast “The Dream Team Tapes,” he played the audio of Jordan drawing a line in the sand with Thomas.

“When they called me to ask me to play, Rod Thorn called me,” Jordan said on the podcast. “I said, ‘Rod, I won’t play if Isiah Thomas is on the team.’ He assured me, he said, ‘You know what? Chuck doesn’t want Isiah. So, Isiah is not going to be part of the team.’”

McCallum made the point that no one on earth would have picked Thomas to make the team if it meant Jordan wouldn’t suit up, as Jordan was a better player and the team’s point guards — Johnson and John Stockton — were stars. Still, one of the major critiques of The Last Dance was how it painted a very specific portrait of Jordan that did not always gel with reality, and the emergence of this audio will help those who have made that argument.