'Biggest free agent on the planet' makes shock WWE debut at Backlash
The 43-year-old wrestler, who sensationally quit rivals New Japan Pro Wrestling last month, was heavily rumoured to be making the jump and he made his presence felt on Saturday night.
Cobb appeared at the end of the United States Title match between defending champ Jacob Fatu and challengers Drew McIntyre, LA Knight and Damian Priest.
Hailed by commentator Michael Cole as the 'biggest free agent on the planet', he appeared at ringside and attacked Knight, helping Fatu to a tainted victory and seemingly aligning himself with Solo Sikoa.
In a statement on their official website days before WrestleMania, NJPW – who have a working agreement with WWE rivals All Elite Wrestling – confirmed Cobb's exit.
'New Japan Pro-Wrestling has come to terms with the departure of Jeff Cobb at his request,' the promotion said at the time.
They added: 'New Japan Pro-Wrestling profoundly apologises for the sudden nature of this news and joins fans in wishing Cobb the best in all his future endeavours.' More Trending
Cobb was stripped of his IWGP Tag Team Championship, which he held with Callum Newman, and he had his farewell in Korakuen Hall on April 19.
He later teased 'retirement' in a series of X post trying to throw fans off the scent.
'16 years is a long time to work, Happy Retirement to me…. I'll let the waves take me to my next destination,' he wrote alongside a beach photo. '🎶 Can I wade in your water, until I catch your wave 🎶'
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And hours before Backlash, he tweeted: 'Just finished a sweet workout and I can't believe after so many years of going to LA, this was my first time going here! If you are in the area I suggest checking it out! Gym, free tanning and when you're done, a beach to jump into!'
This is a breaking news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.
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Daily Mail
10 minutes ago
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Hulk Hogan's official death certificate revealed including details of what will happen to his remains
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Scotsman
40 minutes ago
- Scotsman
‘I'm no deid yet!' Miriam Margolyes heads to the Edinburgh Festival with her love letter show to Dickens
Miram Margolyes | Miram Margolyes The veteran actor is as large as life and twice as noisy as she heads to the Fringe to meet her audience. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... 'I'm no deid yet!' says Miriam Margolyes, channeling her dad's Glasgow accent as she points out that she's still alive and kicking and will be at this year's Edinburgh Fringe with her show about Charles Dickens. Zooming from Australia where she lives with her life-long partner Heather Sutherland, the 84-year-old is outraged about the misinformation spread about her health and recent stories that she wouldn't be attending the Fringe, and the expletives are out. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Yeah, I'm no deid yet. I'm not even sure I'm gonna die, but I'm bloody sure I'm gonna be there at The Fringe.' The award-winning actress, TV personality and author returns with the show that is testament to her lifelong love of all things Dickens and she promises more characters and stories about the famous writer, as well as a Q&A session in which she takes questions from the audience which she will answer in her usual unfiltered frank and funny way. 'There were articles saying I was dying and I wouldn't be coming to the Fringe this year. I believe that there was some kind of a conspiracy against me to stop me from being a success at the Fringe,' she says. 'It came from an article from two years ago when I had a heart operation and was given a cow's aortic valve. I put a photograph on Facebook saying I'm in hospital but I'm coming out soon and I'm fine. Somebody took that and made an article of it and sent it round the newspapers and they printed it again. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I was very angry. It's the most utter rubbish. It's like Mark Twain who said 'reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated'. It's extraordinary, but I do think it was a kind of conspiracy. I never will get to the bottom of it. But I'm here!' Raised in Oxford in a middle-class Jewish household, Margolyes is known for a long career on stage and screen in which she has appeared in the Harry Potter films, Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (which earned her a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress), James and the Giant Peach, Mulan, and on TV more recently for Call the Midwife and the Voice of Meep in last year's Dr Who, she has also explored her adopted homeland with the Almost Australian and Australia Unmasked Documentaries and BBC travelogue Miriam Margolyes: Impossibly Australian. On stage she has performed in WICKED, The Vagina Monologues and Blithe Spirit, as well as writing two bestselling memoirs, This Much is True and Oh Miriam. Having put the record straight about her health, her indignation subsides and our attention turns to what we can expect in her Fringe show, Margolyes & Dickens: More Best Bits. 'There will be humor and tenderness and political comment and there will be quite shocking language. There will be sexual innuendo and there will be wonderful characters. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It's a development of what I did last year. People enjoyed it and I enjoyed doing it. So it's talking about Dickens and acting some of the characters. Because he created 2,000 characters, and they weren't just out of his head. They were out of his life, people he met, that he knew, that fascinated him. He was a journalist, that's what fired him, a fascination with people, wanting to know why they were like they were and how they expressed themselves. And he was utterly brilliant. 'For me, he's the greatest prose writer who ever lived. A genius. He was an observer and a moralist and someone who created a world. It's brighter and sharper and crueler and busier and more dangerous even than ours. He takes you in, and that's what I want to do with the audience, bring them into the Dickens world through the characters.' 'I want to share the thrill I get when I become Mr Bumble or the lesbian, Miss Wade. Share that enthusiasm. It's a gleeful experience for me. The variety of characters from very august, top drawer, upper class to the evil and comic and desperate, that he was able to create because of his curious background. He experienced poverty and the imprisonment of his parents, then later success so he could cross class boundaries, which most writers couldn't do,' she says of the writer who loved and was inspired by Edinburgh, visiting many times and being given the freedom of the city in 1841. 'People know Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, the ones that have been on telly. But they don't know the man. They don't know about his life, his problems, his occasional wickedness. He was just boiling with fascination and rage and delight, surprise and humour. And that is in his books. He was an extraordinary man. And we're losing him. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'And then, when I come to the end of my Dickets bits, the audience can ask me questions and that's always fun because they're cheeky,' she says, eyes twinkling with anticipation. Does she set out to be cheeky and shock people or does it just happen? 'I think it always has just happened. I mean, I love it when people laugh. And when they're slightly shocked. Whenever you say something like c***sucking to people, they go, gulp, ho ho and I find that hysterically funny. I don't know why. I mean, I always did talk about it. 'But I think it's a bit sort of silly to shock people. I don't totally approve of it. But every now and again, I think it's quite useful to say 'Farage is a c***. People don't like it, but I think he is.' What do the audience ask her about most? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'They often ask me about celebrities. They want to know about well known people I worked with and I worked with a great many in my life, in Hollywood and in the theatre and the people I've met on the Graham Norton show. Because everybody's very obsessed with celebrities now. 'And they ask me about my sex life and what do I think about being gay or would I change sex or what do I think about trans? That kind of thing. But I want to talk about Israel and Kier Starmer. I'm very political, but I don't think they want that.' Margolyes, has always been political, but finds herself increasingly motivated as she observes the world around her. 'Now because of the terrible things that have been happening in Israel, I've become even more political and I'm shocked by what's happening in the world, how it's allowed to happen. And I see that we have learnt nothing at all from history. Nothing. And that charlatans like Farage and Boris Johnson, and indolent, entitled people, like Rees-Mogg, still hold power, and corrupt, total a***holes, run countries, like Putin and Trump. We are in the grip of very terrible people.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It's not just politics that Margolyes finds alarming. Her home in New South Wales was recently without water, electricity and internet after devastating floods ravaged the region and she's planning to move somewhere less rural. 'We have to sell the house here, it's just too far out. We're too old to make the journey into town and it's too isolated. I need electricity. It's one of the things I need to put down on my rider - must have electricity.' What else does she have on her rider for Edinburgh? 'Well for everywhere I have spicy tomato juice, a bloody mary mix without the vodka, and I like line caught smoked salmon and cream cheese and capers on sourdough. Does she like any other Scottish delicacies, haggis or tablet for instance? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Tablet! My God, I mustn't eat tablet, because I never stop. Some people can take one piece,' and [the Scottish accent is back], 'forget that! I just scoff the lot!' 'And what's that wonderful fish soup? Cullen Skink. I love that. Years ago I was in a play written by a Scottish Jewish writer Jack Ronda, directed by Tom Cotter, called The Lost Tribe. And it was a kind of fiction that there was a lost tribe of the Jews of Scotland and Billy Paterson was in it and Phylis Logan and we were on location in a sweet wee house near Fordyce and Billy and I bought the location and did it up and it's still there. 'Billy played my father. And you know, I'm older than he is. And Phyllis was wonderful too. We had such fun. And that's where I first came across Cullen Skink. And they did high teas.' Why doesn't she reconnect with her roots and split her time between Scotland as well as England and Australia? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Oh, I'd love to live in Scotland. I'd love to live in the sort of house that my father grew up in after his parents made money. I love Glasgow. I think it's a magnificent city. It's got heart and soul. And it's real and I've always loved it. 'And there are terrific people in Scotland. You know, one of my joys last year, when I did the show in Edinburgh, was to meet Janey Godley. I'd admired and loved her for a long time. And I rang her up one day and say 'can we meet? I just think you're fabulous.' And said, 'Oh, God, I'd love to. You know, I've got cancer and I don't know how long I'm going to live', but she got her husband to drive her to Edinburgh and we spent a magical day together. We talked all day, and a couple of times we both had a nap, because we were exhausted. It was very special for me, to get to know her and she was a great lady. And she was a moralist, you know? I think that the great artists are moralists. She was a great comedian.' On the agenda for Margolyes after the Fringe is making a podcast and the follow up to her BBC documentary series, Miriam Margolyes: Almost Australian, this time round exploring New Zealand. 'Oh, gosh, it's an extraordinary country. It's actually more impressive than Australia in many ways. It has a strong Scottish influence - I have quite a few relatives there because people emigrated. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'But I think it is the relationship with the Maori people that really impressed me. They've been on a journey together and it's impressive. The Australians are still fractious about the First Nation. And actually, there are elements in New Zealand that are too, that are trying to overturn the Treaty of Waitangi, which was the treaty that cemented the respect that the white people must have for the First Nation.' At this point in the interview, which I'm conducting from home, I realise my daughter has been perched on a chair listening, drawn like a moth to a flame from another room by the sound of Margolyes' hilarity and profanity, the voices of the stream of characters she inhabits and the tales of people she has met in the places she's visited. 'Oh, can I have a look at her?' says Margolyes, more curious about other people than talking about herself, but worried about how she sounds (not the swearing of course, but the voice). 'What do I sound like? Very posh, I suppose. I think my voice puts people off, that's the trouble. You know, if I want to talk to somebody I don't know, I put on Scottish, like this [and we're back to her Glasgow accent]. 'Because I think my own voice is a bit too English and I want to try to reach people. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'My dad was from The Gorbals in Glasgow so the accent is part of the world that I grew up in. I didn't grow up in the Gorbals, but my father did. And it was a very nice place in some ways but it was the worst slums of Europe. The people were friendly. And his family went from the Gorbals, first to Govan, then Pollockshields when they made a bit of money and bought a lovely sandstone house and he became a doctor. I went and called once. I rang the bell and the lady opened the door and looked at me and said, 'what are you doing here?' And I said, "Well, I'm in Vagina Monologues, and as soon as I said the word 'vagina', she looked round to see if anyone had heard. She was sweet and invited me in.' For the rest of the interview and chat with my daughter [who tells Margolyes she finds her 'refreshing'], the actor keeps up the accent seamlessly. Will she use it when she's in Scotland to avoid being recognised, which is unlikely but she hopes won't happen. 'I hope people won't recognise me because they get overexcited when they see me.' What do they say to her? 'Harry Potter, that kind of stuff, you know.' Do they ask her about JK Rowling? 'Yeah, all the time. I've never met JK Rowling. I mean, I like her detective stories, but I've never read The Harry Potter books. Because science fiction, I go to sleep because it's all about gadgets and stuff like that.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'And in the show if people ask me what I think about things, I will absolutely say. And I will certainly make a comment about Gaza. Because it's not acceptable. I reject it completely. That the Jewish people can do what they're doing, it's wrong. No question about it. I do think what Hamas did was terrible. I don't support that. But my God, the retaliation. It's really shocking. 'And people ask about the trans issue so I will say things about that. I just want people to be a bit kinder. People should be able to be what they want to be. I think it's awfully sad to find that you're in the wrong body. So I'm very sympathetic to trans people. But if somebody was trying to rape me and were pretending they were changing sex and still had a p**** and were doing damage, well, I'd f***ing kill them. But let's get realistic. The number of people who cause trouble is very, very small. Violence is a crime. If trans people commit crime, they're to be treated like anybody else. But because you want to change your sex, that's not a crime. It's not a crime to want to be called 'them'. It's ungrammatical, but it's not a crime.' Margolyes has plenty to say and will continue to do so as long as she's alive and kicking, which we've established that she is. Is it true that Queen Elizabeth II once told her to be quiet? 'Oh, yes. It was a rather uncomfortable moment because when you meet the royals, you slightly lose your marbles. Anyway, I met her at this British Book Week event and she came over and she said, 'what do you do?' And instead of saying, 'I'm an actress' or 'I record books', I said, 'Your Majesty, I am the best reader of stories in the world'. She looked at me, rolled her eyes and sighed, and obviously thought this woman is barking mad. And then she turned to the next person and said, 'what do you do?' and ignored me. He said, 'Mam, I published books for children and we've discovered that if the pages and the ink for the various letters is different colours it helps children absorb the information more quickly and easily,' and I said, 'good heavens, that's extraordinary. I didn't know that. What an amazing thing.' And Her Majesty turned to me and said, "Be quiet." With a very crisp tea on the end of 'quiet'. Never to be forgotten.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Never to be forgotten, but heeded and obeyed? Nae chance. Her audience will expect nothing less. Margolyes & Dickens: More Best Bits, Pleasance @ The EICC – Pentland, 9-24 Aug (except 18th & 21st), 6pm (show runs for 70 minutes)
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Born in the USA: Is American Eagle really using whiteness to sell jeans?
American Eagle is a US-founded fashion brand that sells jeans, shrunken 'baby' T-shirts and cropped sweatshirts to predominantly tween and teenage girls. On TikTok, users gush about their clothes in outfit-of-the-day posts or shopping hauls. This week, however, the brand found itself facing backlash over its new campaign, starring the 27-year-old White Lotus and Euphoria actor Sydney Sweeney, in which critics are alleging American Eagle uses the language of eugenics to try to sell denim. The campaign depicts Sweeney in a denim shirt and baggy jeans provocatively posing as a male voice says: 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.' In one now-viral clip, Sweeney is filmed pasting a campaign poster on to a billboard. The poster's text reads 'Sydney Sweeney has great genes jeans'. In another video that has since been removed from American Eagle's social media channels, Sweeney, who has blond hair and blue eyes, says: 'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour. My jeans are blue.' Critics were quick to point out the implications of the advert's wordplay. In one video that has had more than 3m views, a TikTok user compared it to 'fascist propaganda,' adding: 'a blonde haired, blue-eyed white woman is talking about her good genes, like, that is Nazi propaganda'. On the brand's own channels, users are battling it out in the comments section. 'It's giving 'Subtle 1930's Germany',' reads one. Another person posted: 'The woke crowd needs to leave the room.' Even the US senator Ted Cruz has weighed in. Reposting a news story on X, he commented: 'Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I'm sure that will poll well ...' According to Sophie Gilbert, a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the book Girl on Girl which explores how pop culture is shaped by misogyny: 'The slogan 'Sydney Sweeney has good jeans' obviously winks at the obsession with eugenics that's so prevalent among the modern right.' Dr Sarah Cefai, a senior lecturer in gender and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, agrees. 'Honestly, what were they thinking, that a white supremacist fantasy has permission to be aired so conspicuously?' Aria Halliday, an associate professor in gender and women's studies, African American and Africana studies and author of Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture, isn't surprised by the ad. In recent years, she says, 'we have seen an influx of media reasserting the beauty of thin, white, blond, and blue-eyed people,' with many brands 'invested in re-presenting the wholesomeness and sanctity of conservative white values.' Critics have also zeroed in on the campaign's focus on Sweeney's body. In one clip the camera zooms in on the actor's breasts – lingering in a way that Gilbert sees as 'leering and unapologetic' – as Sweeney says: 'My body's composition is determined by my jeans.' The camera then cuts back to Sweeney's face as she shouts: 'Hey, eyes up here!' For Cefai, 'its sexualisation of the viewer via its voyeurism exposes western sexism as a racialised fantasy of whiteness'. American Eagle were approached for comment by the Guardian but did not respond. Fashion campaigns are notorious for purposefully sparking controversy, but the denim genre is a particularly seedy seam. In a 1980s Calvin Klein campaign, a 15-year-old Brooke Shields mused: 'You know what gets between me and my Calvin's? Nothing.' In 1995, another Calvin Klein ad featured models including Kate Moss being filmed in a basement as they undid the top button of their jeans and were asked: 'Are you nervous?' It was criticised for alluding to child exploitation. The American Eagle campaign comes at a time when the US is witnessing a cultural shift centering whiteness as well as more conservative gender roles, while the Maga movement has been linked with promoting a 'soft eugenics' way of thinking. In 2025, there are new factors reinforcing old stereotypes. For Halliday, the rise of GLP-1 medications for weight loss and the record high unemployment of Black women in the US all feed into a wider cultural shift that is 'about recentering whiteness as what America is and who Americans look like.' Some fashion imagery is reflecting this wider regression. The blacklisted photographer Terry Richardson is shooting for magazines and brands again, while Dov Charney, whose role as CEO of American Apparel was terminated after allegations of sexual misconduct, is now making content for his new brand that resembles the heavily sexualised noughties style of his former brand's advertising. For American Eagle, a brand whose biggest demographic is 15- to 25-year-old females, to tailor their campaign to the male gaze seems retrograde, if not downright creepy. However, Jane Cunningham, co-author of Brandsplaining: Why Marketing is (Still) Sexist and How to Fix It, says many gen Z-ers who are fed a 'hypersexualised visual diet' on social media may buy into the strategy. 'Their attitude may be that they are 'owning' their sexuality by being overtly sexual in the way they present,' she says, pointing to the pop star Sabrina Carpenter as another example of someone who has also been accused of catering to the heterosexual male gaze. Sign up to Fashion Statement Style, with substance: what's really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved after newsletter promotion Halliday says that while 'Black girls are rarely the target audience for ads,' some may still be curious to try the jeans: 'the desire to be perceived as beautiful is hard to ignore,' she says. Many gen Z-ers may not have experienced this genre of advertising, or 'intentional provocation as branding strategy', before, says Gilbert, for whom the campaign also reminds her of 90s Wonderbra ads with their 'Hello Boys' slogan. But maybe they will come to see through it. They are 'extremely savvy as consumers', she points out. 'They have the kind of language and expertise in terms of deconstructing media that I couldn't have dreamed of utilising as a teen during the 1990s. And they know when someone is trying to play them, which seems to be happening here. She adds: 'It all feels like it was cooked up in a conference room to provoke maximum controversy and maximum outrage, and to get maximum attention.' And it seems – in the business sense at least – to be working. Since the campaign launched, American Eagle's stock has shot up almost 18%. To read the complete version of this newsletter – complete with this week's trending topics in The Measure – subscribe to receive Fashion Statement in your inbox every Thursday.
