No joke – here are your quick and editorial-free results the April 1, 2020, edition of WWE NXT. The last episode of NXT before WrestleMania included a women’s gauntlet match, a triple threat for the North American Championship, and more. Make sure you’re back here tomorrow for the full Best and Worst of NXT review.

NXT results:

1. Velveteen Dream defeated Bobby Fish with a Dream Valley Driver.

– After the match, Dream cut a promo on Adam Cole and the rest of the Undisputed Era.

– Malcolm Bivens cut a promo introducing the Bivens Enterprises tag team, Saurav Gurjar and Rinku Singh.

2. Dexter Lumis defeated Jake Atlas by submission. This was Atlas’s NXT TV debut.

– A vignette for Killer Kross played.

– Highlights from Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa’s brawl in the Performance Center were shown.

3. Dakota Kai won a six-woman gauntlet match to determine the final entrant in next week’s ladder match to determine the post-WrestleMania contender for the NXT Women’s Championship. Shotzi Blackheart entered the match first and eliminated Deonna Purrazzo, Xia Li, Aliyah, and Kayden Carter. Kai, accompanied by Raquel Gonzalez, entered last and eliminated Blackheart with the Go To Kick.

– A recap of the feud between Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley played.

4. Kushida submitted Joaquin Wilde with an armbar. Kushida and Wilde shook hands after the match.

– A recap of the Gargano-Ciampa feud played.

– As he was being interviewed outside of Full Sail, Wilde was kidnapped by masked men like Raul Mendoza was a few weeks ago.

5. NXT North American Championship match: Keith Lee (c) defeated Dominik Dijakovic and Damian Priest, pinning Dijakovic with the Big Bang Catastrophe.

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The world has been on virtual lock-down for weeks now in the face of a global pandemic that has killed tens of thousands and continues to spread rapidly as a badly-depleted healthcare industry scrambles to provide services to the scores of people who have been affected.

The crisis has forced everyone to make sacrifices and has led to an unprecedented situation in which the majority of the population is confined to their homes and left floundering to find ways to occupy their time to try and maintain a basic level of sanity amid all the fear and uncertainty.

It’s required many people to give up what they love doing the most. That includes professional athletes, whose seasons have been delayed indefinitely. For Steph Curry, it’s meant that he hasn’t been able to shoot a basketball for weeks now. That’s right. Apparently, Steph Curry, aka the greatest shooter who’s ever walked the face of the Earth, doesn’t have a basketball hoop at his home. But that was rectified recently after Ayesha purchased one for him online, but it turns out the assembly was more involved than he anticipate.

Via Ben Cohen of The Wall Street Journal:

Stephen Curry had been stuck at home for more than two weeks, unable to do the one thing he does better than anybody, when his wife ordered him a Spalding hoop for their driveway. For the first time in 16 days, he could shoot a basketball. Or at least that was the plan.

But this solution only caused another problem. Now he actually had to put the hoop together.

“I got overwhelmed looking at the manual,” Curry said. After what he could only describe as “a pretty serious effort,” Curry finally succeeded at his unexpected assembly job. It only took him five hours.

“I was very confident in myself going in,” he said. “That was shot down pretty quick.”

Perhaps gaining a more intimate knowledge of all the mechanisms of a basketball hoop will make him even that much more deadly as a shooter. But even though he hasn’t been able to shoot recently, he’s had plenty to keep himself occupied during the self-quarantine.

Earlier this week, Curry interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci of the Institute for Infections Diseases in an effort to educate fans about the dangers of COVID-19 and the best ways to protect yourself and others. He and his wife Ayesha have donated to local efforts to ensure school children have meals, and he along with the Warriors organization have pledged $1 million to the arena workers who have been put out of work.

Before the shutdown, Curry had just recently made his return after missing a big chunk of the season with a broken hand. The new hoop in the driveway should help him get his touch back for if and when the NBA season returns.

(The Wall Street Journal)

They started off so well!

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Baby Yoda cookies > cookies shaped like literally any other thing on Earth.

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While jokes are generally appreciated in these dark times, April Fools’ Day was essentially cancelled this year. Turns out no one quarantining and relentlessly watching the news and trying not to freak out 24/7 was particularly in the mood for some Ashton Kutcher business. A couple people braved it. Lil Nas X had a decent prank. And then there was the one from one of our darkest comedic minds: Danny McBride.

The former Kenny Powers — as well as co-writer of 2018’s smash Halloween reboot/sequel — took to Instagram Wednesday with a short video. Looking not terribly enthused (because who is these days!), he went onto relate a story worthy of his Eastbound & Down monster.

“I played a pretty impressive April Fools’ Day prank on my children this morning,” McBride confessed to his over half a million followers. “I woke ’em up early, I said it was time to go to school, I got ’em dressed, I drove ’em to their school, which was empty. And then I turned to their faces and said, ‘Psych, the coronavirus is still going on, and you’re never going to see your friends in person ever again. April Fools.’” At this point McBride chuckles, then adds, “I wasn’t expecting them to cry. But I think that’s when I realized I had given them the perfect April Fools’.”

So there you go. If you felt compelled to add in any way to this prank-filled holiday, let’s hope you were as funny as the guy who once went toe-to-toe with James Franco.

Netflix has shared the first trailer to their upcoming documentary, LA Originals, which follows Chicano artists Mister Cartoon and Estevan Oriol’s journey to success on the outskirts of hip-hop. Set to arrive next week, the documentary has been promoted as “an exploration of the culture and landmarks of the Chicano and street art movement that cemented Mister Cartoon and Estevan Oriol’s status as behind-the-scenes hip-hop legends.”

The ad emphasizes the Cartoon and Oriol’s hip-hop presence, as well as such guests as Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, Pharrell, Cypress Hill, and Blink-182. Geroge Lopez, actress Michelle Rodriguez, actor Wilmer Valderrama, and the legendary Danny Trejo can also be seen.

According to HipopDX, Mister Cartoon is responsible for the logos of both Cypress Hill and Shady Records, but it’s his work as a tattoo artist for which he is most famous, having inked the likes of Kobe Bryant, 50 Cent, and Method Man. He has also appeared in the music video for Xzibit’s “Criminal Set” and Eminem’s “Stan.” Estevan Oriol, the documentary’s director, is himself a legendary photographer, best known for his work within the Chicano and gang cultures, as well as capturing Eminem, Cypress Hill, and Kendrick Lamar.

LA Originals is out 04/10 via Netflix. You can watch the trailer above.

While UFC president Dana White scrambles to make UFC 249 a reality — apparently now without Khabib Nurmagomedov — current bantamweight champion Henry Cejudo is already making backup plans should his scheduled title defense run into similar issues.

Nurmagomedov is currently stuck in Russia, and with borders closing due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, White is being forced to find an alternative for the lightweight championship tilt featuring Tony Ferguson. Cejudo is slated to square off against the legendary Jose Aldo, despite consecutive losses, in a title bout in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on May 9, and that fight could soon be in trouble as well.

Looking for a potential backup in case things do fall through, Cejudo called out Dominick Cruz in an Instagram post, who for those scoring at home, hasn’t fought since losing his belt to Cody Garbrandt in December 2016.

Since #UFC249 is in jeopardy because we can’t get Khabib out of Russia. So Just in case we can’t get Jose Baldo into America soil, make sure to bring your untailored tuxedo that you wear every Saturday long with yours balls! Because you’re on deck sweetheart. Someone has to bend the knee to Triple C on May 9th!

It’s another reputation fight for Cejudo, who is yet again overlooking the top three contenders in the division: Marlon Moraes (who lost to Cejudo last June), Aljamain Sterling and Petr Yan.

After weeks of back-and-forth, Khabib Nurmagomedov has officially pulled out of UFC 249, announcing on Wednesday on Instagram that he is at home in quarantine and would not be fighting during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Staying home in quarantine and reading the reaction of people to the situation around my fight, it turns out that the whole world should be in quarantine, governments of all countries, famous people around the world urge people to follow all safety requirements in order to limit the spread of the disease, to save people, and Khabib is the only one relieved of all obligations and must demonstrate free will and train flying around the world, for the sake of fight? – I understand everything and I’m definitely upset more than you to cancel the fight, probably like all others, I had many plans after the fight, but I can’t control it all.

The greatest countries and the largest companies of our time are shocked by what is happening, every day the situation changes unpredictably.

But Khabib still has to fight, is that what you saying?

– Take care of yourself and put yourself in my shoes. –

The news comes after Nurmagomedov left the United States to travel to the UAE, where it was assumed UFC 249 would take place. He was eventually re-routed to Russia due to travel restrictions, putting his lightweight title defense in jeopardy.

With Nurmagomedov out of the picture, Tony Ferguson is calling for the champ to be stripped of his title because he’s “scared and running,” the challenger said in an interview with ESPN’s Ariel Helwani.

“He obviously knew what he could do to help save this card,” Ferguson said. “He didn’t want to take any of those chances. Everybody is taking risks trying to do it. He bailed out, man. It’s pretty hard to explain, but he bailed out, man.”

Justin Gaethje has been floated as a potential opponent for Ferguson, but that deal has yet to be agreed upon. Gaethje is on a three-fight win streak, with victories over Edson Barboza and most recently, Donald Cerrone.

This is the fifth time a Nurmagomedov-Ferguson tilt has been canceled.