A lot has gone down at this weekend’s “too big for just one night” WrestleMania — a Universal Championship win on a day’s notice, a wild leap off a giant sign, and the life-changing experience of the BONEYARD MATCH — but it wouldn’t feel truly complete until host Rob Gronkowski got involved.

On night one, 24/7 Champion R-Truth showed up and asked his two greatest natural predators (a sports celebrity and a former 24/7 Champion) to help him hide. They attacked him, of course, but Gronk’s supposed best friend Mojo Rawley stole the pin. At the beginning of night two, Gronk vowed that he’d be the 24/7 Champion by the end of the night.

He made good on that promise after a lengthy Edge and Randy Orton Last Man Standing match, as Truth and everyone from the 24/7 division allowed in the building ran out and started brawling under Gronkowski’s host perch. What a terrible place to choose! Gronk decided to drop a big senton on everyone, pinned Rawley to win his first WWE Championship, and ran away with the title. Titus O’Neil took over as host after that.

Hey, there was just as good a chance Gronk was going to leave the weekend as Universal Champion, so let’s be happy he’ll spend the rest of WrestleMania running in fear from a bunch of extras you couldn’t even identify with a program. Congratulations, Gronk! Let’s dance!

Everything gets rebooted these days, but there’s one property that has so far gone unsullied: Columbo, the peerless and unique detective show that gave Peter Falk arguably (well, almost arguably) his greatest role. But if you’re going to remake it (and that’s debatable), at least we have two possible stars: Mark Ruffalo and Natasha Lyonne. The internet has been talking up this dream project — which, we should stress, is in no serious stage of development — with some on Team Ruffalo and some on Team Lyonne. And word found its way back to the stars. And now they’re duking it out online.

This was caught by ComicBook.com, who first caught wind of rumors (which is mostly to say people online hoping that their dream will somehow become a reality) in 2014. Possibly due to everyone quarantining — and maybe because a few seasons of Columbo are streaming on Amazon Prime — that talk came back, stronger than ever. Eventually Lyonne noticed.

“I’ll fight Ruffalo for it if I have to,” Lyonne tweeted. “Me and you, after class, Warriors style for Columbo. @MarkRuffalo Seems the only reasonable way to settle this hypothetically.”

Alas, it didn’t seem like Ruffalo was putting up much of a fight.

“Natasha, I think Columbo is a great part we should all be able to play it,” Ruffalo responded. “I want to play Agatha Christie too!”

So which team are you? Although perhaps a bit more conventionally handsome than Falk (maybe), Ruffalo certainly has the right disheveled, mumbly vibe that would make him right for Lt. Frank Columbo of the LAPD. He also probably looks great in beige raincoats. However, Lyonne possesses one of Falk’s greatest qualities: His ability to throw other actors off through eccentric line readings and body language — and in turn to make his frequently super-famous prey think they’re smarter than him, in turn letting down their guard. (And, like Falk, she’s an actress one wants to watch in anything.)

But once again, there is no official Columbo reboot! And while Ruffalo and Lyonne are both worthy successors, it would be hard for anyone to top Falk, who won four Emmys for the role from 1970 through 1990, all the while balancing an illustrious film career. It’s one of the few shows entirely tailor-made around its star, who only did it when he wanted to, and even took an 11-year break after seven seasons. If we never get Ruffalo or Lyonne as television’s greatest homicide detective, we’ll always have 69 great episodes, well worth endless revisits.

(Via ComicBook.com)

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A number of musical acts have turned to Instagram Live to keep themselves and their fans entertained. One example of this: Tory Lanez and his new Quarantine Radio show. Along with guest appearances from a number of artists in the music industry, the show invites everyday fans to participate in twerk contests for the duration of the show. Another artists who’s turned to Instagram Live is Lil Yachty, whose recent programs have toed the line between entertaining and demeaning.

Nearly two weeks ago, the Atlanta rapper convinced a fan to shave off their eyebrows for $200. He got another fan to eat deodorant. Yachty upped the price to for his latest request.

Hosting another iteration of his “talent show” on Instagram Live, Yachty invited the fan to drink his own pee. The fan complied and headed to his bathroom before realizing his sister did not quite flush during her last visit. Yacthy then dared the fan to drink his sister’s urine, which the fan did, all while Yachty watched in disbelief, all while egging him on. The fan’s reward was a deposit from Yachty to his CashApp account.

You can watch the ordeal, if you want to, in the video above.

The Chicago Bulls have been mired in turmoil in recent years. They’ve gone through coaching changes, front office discord, roster turnover, and a fan base that is growing increasingly impatient as the losses keep piling up without much tangible progress to show for it.

There have long been cries for major changes to their embattled front-office duo of VP John Paxon and GM Gar Forman, and earlier this week, the team announced that they were embarking on a formal search for a new executive that would control over all basketball decisions, while transitioning Paxon and Forman to different roles.

That still leaves head coach Jim Boylen on the hot seat, as the incoming exec will ultimately have the final say on whether he keeps his job. Beyond that, they still have the issue of disgruntled players who are unhappy with their roles and/or Boylen’s coaching style. Lauri Markkanen is apparently chief among them, and if there aren’t significant changes, he could be looking for a ticket out.

Via Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times:

And then there was the quiet storm, privately churning in the corner since early on in the season, keeping his frustrations as off-the-record one-liners, discrediting the direction of the offense, his role in it, and the highly embraced shot profile that Bulls analytics was stressing.

Make no mistake about it, third-year big man Lauri Markkanen was one unhappy camper before the coronavirus put the NBA on hiatus. Unhappy enough that if the direction of the organization was going to stay unchanged, he’d rather be elsewhere.

Markkanen had been sidelined for most of the previous season with an elbow injury, and his numbers were down all across the board before the league went on hiatus amid the coronavirus pandemic. With Markkanen, though, it’s all a matter of how he’s being used.

Markkanen is a prototypical offensive forward for today’s game, and the Bulls will have to figure out a way to maximize his talent moving forward and unlock the potential that exists in a two-pronged attack that features Zach LaVine. But the new executive will also have the tall order of finding free agents to come in and bolster their roster.

With the worldwide lockdown, who knows how long it will be before any of this can play itself out, but the Bulls have plenty to keep themselves occupied as they look toward the future.

(Chicago Sun-Times)

Almost six years after first winning the NXT Women’s Championship May 29, 2014 at an NXT TakeOver that didn’t even require a subtitle, Charlotte Flair is holding that title again after beating Rhea Ripley in the first match on Night Two of WrestleMania 36. Of course the belt is different now — it was pink way back in 2014 — and the brand has considerably more prestige now that NXT isn’t “officially” considered developmental and airs on USA instead of the WWE Network.

The match was pretty brutal, and thanks to the lack of fans at the WWE Performance Center, you could hear not just every strike and impact, but lots of trash talk, especially from Charlotte. The Queen also played it smart, working Rhea’s leg throughout the match, including a shot from behind that made Rhea’s leg crumple pretty sickeningly.

Nevertheless, when Charlotte first applied the Figure 4, Rhea seemed determined to get out of it, striking at Charlotte with her fists. But once Charlotte bridged into the Figure 8, it was too much for Rhea, who had to tap, losing a title she won on NXT TV on December 18 of last year.

Now that Charlotte is NXT Champion, that presumably means she’ll be on NXT TV, although we don’t know exactly what that will look like after next week, considering the Coronavirus lockdown.

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*Types a few keys on a keyboard.* “Okay, I’m in.”

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Watch out world – we’re grown nowwww.

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