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Here are your quick, editorial-free NXT results for April 22, 2020. Tonight’s episode from WWE’s black and yellow brand included more matches from the tournament to crown an interim Cruiserweight Champion and Dexter Lumis in the main event. Make sure you’re back here tomorrow for the full Best and Worst of NXT review.

WWE NXT results:

– The episode opened by addressing the “incident” revealed on the NXT Twitter account earlier today in which Finn Balor’s belongings were ransacked in the locker room. Velveteen cut a promo on Balor, his scheduled opponent for the night, who was nowhere to be found. Adam Cole entered the venue, accused Dream of trying to weasel his way into a title shot, and said he would never get one. The Undisputed Era attacked Dream from behind. Keith Lee ran in to save Dream and all the men brawled. The segment ended with Lee and Dream in the ring and the UE on the retreat.

1. Raquel Gonzalez and Dakota Kai defeated Shotzi Blackheart and Tegan Nox. Gonzalez pinned Blackheart after hitting a one-armed powerbomb.

– The night’s main event was announced as Lee and Dream vs. Cole and Roderick Strong.

– A video package about Drake Maverick and the cruiserweight tournament played. It began with Maverick’s emotional video response to being laid off last week.

2. Interim NXT Cruiserweight Champion Tournament match: Jake Atlas defeated Drake Maverick after hitting his cartwheel DDT (known on the indies as the LGB-DDT.) Atlas tried to talk to Maverick after the match, but Maverick walked past him.

3. Interim NXT Cruiserweight Champion Tournament match: Kushida defeated Tony Nese by submission with the Hoverboard Lock.

– In a backstage interview, Matt Riddle and Timothy Thatcher talked about their new partnership.

– From their dining table, Johnny Gargano and Candice LeRae cut promos about how they’ve been under-appreciated in NXT.

– A video package hyped Io Shirai challenging Charlotte Flair for the NXT Women’s Championship.

– A dejected Drake Maverick was interviewed on the stairs backstage about his tournament loss.

4. Mia Yim defeated Jessi Kamea. After the match, Flair entered and asked Yim if she accepted her offer of a title match. Yim said she would be honored. Flair thanked Yim for helping make her a star by facing her in her first NXT match and said she would help make Yim a star next week.

5. Interim NXT Cruiserweight Champion Tournament match: El Hijo del Fantasmo defeated Jack Gallagher.

– Yim vs. Flair for the NXT Women’s Championship and Lee vs. Damian Priest for the NXT North American Championship were promoted for next week.

– We saw that during the commercial, the masked men who have been kidnapping people in the parking lot tried to abduct Fantasma, but he fought them off.

6. Velveteen Dream and Dexter Lumis defeated Adam Cole and Roderick Strong. As the match began, Priest attacked Lee, hurting him enough that he had to be taken to the back. Dream began to wrestle essentially a handicap match against both Undisputed Era members. Dexter Lumis appeared on the apron during the match and stared silently at Dream. Dream eventually tagged Lumis and the ref allowed Lumis to compete. The match ended after Dream pinned Cole with the Purple Rainmaker for the win.

Here are your quick and dirty, editorial-free AEW Dynamite results for April 15, 2020. The show featured Kip Sabian versus Dustin Rhodes, Sammy Guevara versus Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy versus Jimmy Havoc, and more. Make sure you’re here tomorrow for the complete Ins and Outs of AEW Dynamite column.

AEW Dynamite Results:

— The show opened with Cody in a Batcave-looking control room talking about all the wrestlers who have matches tonight, and then questioning his place among them. He said that critics of AEW will continue to move the goalposts, but he’s not worried about that.

1. Darby Allin defeated Sammy Guevara to move on in the TNT Championship Tournament. Allin pinned Guevara in the Last Supper.

— Matt Hardy cut a promo on Chris Jericho from his compound. He started in his Broken “Damascus” persona, and then became regular Matt Hardy and cut a more normal promo as well.

2. Kenny Omega defeated Alan Angels. Omega pinned Angels after hitting a second V-Trigger.

— Scorpio Sky was the subject of a video package about his history and how close he came to leaving wrestling after a back injury and problems finding opportunities before he joined SCU.

— Cody listened to Dustin Rhodes’ voicemail about how he’ll retire if he doesn’t beat Kip Sabian.

3. Orange Cassidy defeated Jimmy Havoc. Penelope Ford attempted to interfere, but Chuck Taylor tried to pull her off the apron. She went down into a split instead, and Kip Sabian jumped on Chuck and Trent. In the chaos, Cassidy managed to pin Havoc. Havoc and Kip Sabian attacked Cassidy after the match, but the Best Friends made the save.

— MJF appeared in front of his house, and said he would explain why he hasn’t been wrestling on AEW Dynamite. He acted like he was going to cry, and then announced that he’s suffering from a bad hangnail. The camera backed up to reveal his arm in a sling with a Burberry bandage around his little finger.

4. Wardlow defeated Lee Johnson. Wardlow pinned Johnson quickly after an Airplane Spin.

— An ex-football player was seen applying online to be in the Dark Order, and then the video cut to his interview with Mr. Brodie Lee. Brodie gave him a mask and welcomed him into the Dark Order.

5. Brodie Lee defeated Justin Law. Lee pinned Law after a Lariat. After the match, he got in Marko Stunt’s face

— In a backstage interview, the Best Friends challenge Kip Sabian and Jimmy Havoc to a tag team match.

— In a new edition of The Bubbly Bunch, Sammy Guevara was feeling down about the Inner Circle’s recent losses, but the rest of the group encouraged him to be positive. Jericho suggested that they dance to cheer up. Santana suggested the Flim Flam, and Jericho said that who ever did the best job would get a bottle of hand sanitizer as a prize. Then they all danced. Jericho was mad that Sammy clearly won the contest, calling him a show-off and throwing the hand sanitizer at the screen of his phone.

— Dustin Rhodes and Kip Sabian had a video package about their match and the TNT Championship.

6. Dustin Rhodes defeated Kip Sabian to move on in the TNT Championship Tournament and save his career. Rhodes pinned Sabian after a Code Red, after Sabian was distracted by Penelope Ford’s fight with Brandi Rhodes.

Kawhi Leonard is one of the best all-around basketball players on the planet, and that is in no small part thanks to one of is defining physical attributes, i.e. his enormous mitts. Like Michael Jordan before him, Kawhi has figured out ways to leverage those hands to his advantage on both sides of the court.

Early on in his career, they earned him the nickname “The Klaw,” and through his endorsement deal with Jordan (owned by Nike), that led to the development of a logo that has been associated with him ever since. However, Kawhi has since parted ways with the Oregon-based shoe giant and signed on with New Balance.

Nike, however, has refused to give up the rights to the logo, and on Wednesday, a court rejected his bid to regain the copyright, ruling that the final version of the logo is just different enough from Kawhi’s original sketch to ensure their ownership of its intellectual property rights.

Via Maxine Bernstein of The Oregonian:

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman ruled that the logo Nike designers helped create with Leonard marked an “independent piece of intellectual property’’ that was distinct from the original sketch Leonard initially conceived and shared with Nike.

“It’s not merely a derivative work of the sketch itself,’’ the judge ruled from the bench after an hour of oral argument held by phone as well as multiple briefs filed in the case. “I do find it to be new and significantly different from the design.”

Nike sues Kawhi back over his “Klaw” logo

Read more: https://t.co/fl1GUfQXa6 pic.twitter.com/aY8IVwiHY4

— SoleCollector.com (@SoleCollector) July 18, 2019

Leonard originally filed his suit during the 2019 NBA Finals when he was still with the Raptors. The following summer, there were rumors that the Los Angeles Clippers were considering making a bid to Nike for the rights to the logo as part of their free agency pitch to Kawhi. That didn’t happen, but Kawhi, of course, ended up signing their anyway. Regardless, it’s a tough loss for Kawhi and his camp, but also an opportunity to move forward on something bigger and better.

(The Oregonian)

Much of America has been on lockdown, quarantining from the still rampaging pandemic, for well over a month now, and what have we been doing to keep busy? Streaming, of course. But a new online petition has been gaining traction, one that offers a modest proposal: Netflix should be free for at least the next 60 days.

Entertainment Weekly caught the petition, which was launched on Change.org and currently has over 50,000 signatures. Their argument? It states that quarantining and social distancing are of utmost importance, but there are also drawbacks, among them that it “runs the risk of boredom and isolation, which can lead to depression, among other factors.”

The petition states that many “are turning to their streaming services to alleviate their monotony,” but that there’s a problem: “many people cannot afford these membership fees, especially in a time like now when many people’s economic livelihood is already strained.”

It continues:
“Therefore, this petition asks that all worldwide streaming services inact a temporary 60 day stoppage of membership charges, as well as per-movie rental fees,” continues the petition. “If people can watch as much as they want, whenever they want, this will help alleviate the stress of home isolation, as well as encourage people to stay home. This is a responsible community health strategy… I call upon every one of these companies that can help make an involuntary homestay more comfortable and therefore more successful to do their part to lift our sorrows and stresses of the quarantine.”

As per EW, Netflix has added 16 million new subscribers so far this year alone, which doubled its projections and led to a surge in its stock price. Indeed, as of Tuesday its value is more than $190 billion, making it more profitable than Disney — although Disney, some of its major cash cows being shuttered because of COVID-19, is currently bleeding cash. Still, Disney+ has signed up over 50 million subscribers since launching in November.

EW reported that neither Netflix nor any other streamer had commented on the petition since, so we’ll see what happens.

To view the petition, visit Change.org.

(Via EW)

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In news that should come as a shock to no one, streaming has gone up a shocking amount since this time last year. As per Deadline, a new report from Nielsen Holdings, the data collection agency that tracks television ratings and other viewing habits, details that from the fourth full week of March 2019 through the fourth full week of March 2020, “streaming among people 25-54 has increased almost 100%.” That’s a lot of people watching Tiger King.

You probably think you know why: We’re all (or most of us) at home quarantining from a rampaging pandemic that has claimed over 42,000 lives in the United States alone. We’re scared, we’re angry, but we’re also bored and in desperate need of distraction, so everyone’s bingeing things shows and movies or perhaps fiddling around with Quibi, the new bite-sized, exclusively phone-based (for now, anyway) streamer.

But not so fast: Quarantining didn’t begin in most places until mid-March, and that’s probably not enough time to so grossly inflate those stats. For another, the report states that “organic streaming had been growing over the past few months,” which it attributes to a growing number of new streamers, most notably Disney+. That said, the numbers have definitely gone up since COVID-19 arrived on American shores, with a 50% increase in streaming during 1pm to 4pm — i.e., work hours — between March 2 and March 23.

Though Nielsen singled out the 25 to 54 age group, they claimed streaming was up among all demographics, but especially amongst kids. With many schools closed nationwide, the younger demographic saw a 60% uptick over the majority of March.

Data has yet to be released for the weeks after March 23, but no doubt it’s rose even further, or at least plateaued at around the same shocking number. By the way, a friendly reminder that books are also a fine way to pass the time.

(Via Deadline)