Latest news with #CrownJewel
Newsweek
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
WWE Star Pitches Tag Team Title Run With Major Celebrity
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. With multi-platinum rapper Cardi B set to host SummerSlam this weekend, WWE superstar Chelsea Green has a big idea for the Grammy-winning artist. In a new interview, Green pitched the idea of them forming a tag team to challenge for the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships. Speaking with Josh Martinez of Z100 on the Superstar Crossover podcast, Green made her case for the dream team. She stated that the two of them together would be an unstoppable force. Chelsea G and Cardi B? In her typical, confident fashion, Chelsea Green claimed that the SummerSlam host is already a massive fan of hers. She used this as the basis for her pitch to team up and go after the current tag team champions, Raquel Rodriguez and Roxanne Perez. "I know she's a fan girl of me. She absolutely loves me, so maybe she should hop on over, and we should tag team," Green said. "I feel like maybe Chelsea G and Cardi B versus... I mean, really, anyone, but I definitely want to go for the champs, the tag champs." A Perfect Character Pitch The comments are a perfect extension of Chelsea Green's on-screen character. Since returning to WWE, she has portrayed an entitled, "Karen"-like persona who constantly complains to management and believes she is the biggest star in the women's division, despite her mixed win-loss record. Her belief that a global superstar like Cardi B "absolutely loves" her and should team with her is a delusional but hilarious example of her character's inflated ego. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 11: A WWE logo is shown on a screen before a WWE news conference at T-Mobile Arena on October 11, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was announced that WWE... LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 11: A WWE logo is shown on a screen before a WWE news conference at T-Mobile Arena on October 11, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was announced that WWE wrestler Braun Strowman will face heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury and WWE champion Brock Lesnar will take on former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez at the WWE's Crown Jewel event at Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 31. More Green previously found success with this persona when she teamed with Sonya Deville and later Piper Niven to win the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship. More news: WWE Superstar Announces Retirement Match A History of Celebrity Tag Matches While Green's pitch is in-character, it is not outside the realm of possibility for WWE. The company has a long and successful history of featuring celebrities in matches at their biggest events. From Mr. T teaming with Hulk Hogan in the main event of the first WrestleMania to Bad Bunny's universally acclaimed performance at WrestleMania 37, celebrity involvement is a cornerstone of WWE's entertainment strategy. This year's SummerSlam will even feature a massive celebrity tag team match, as the musician Jelly Roll will team with Randy Orton to face Drew McIntyre and Logan Paul. Cardi B, who is a well-known and vocal fan of professional wrestling, would be a perfect candidate to follow in their footsteps. Her social media interactions with various superstars over the years have shown she has a genuine passion for the business, which is a key ingredient for a successful celebrity crossover. While a match is unlikely to happen this weekend, fans will be watching Cardi B's hosting duties very closely. More WWE News: For more on WWE, head to Newsweek Sports.
Indianapolis Star
a day ago
- Sport
- Indianapolis Star
Bubba Wallace envisioned joining NASCAR legends, again doubted himself, then ended 100-race drought
INDIANAPOLIS — Bubba Wallace drove the closing laps of Sunday's Brickyard 400 with a pair of guests in his cockpit. Their voices echoed the dichotomy of emotions the 23XI Racing driver elicits whenever he steps on stage for pre-race introductions: those thundering boos filled with hate, disgust and doubt, and the raucous yells and rhythmic chants of his name that rain down whenever one of NASCAR's most divisive drivers finds successes. Though he's worked in recent years to silence the noise and silo himself off from the world on race days in an attempt to discover an internal calm to help lessen the valleys on bad days and refocus himself on the ones where success seems within his grasp, dueling voices still linger. One: a nagging, irritating and oftentimes successfully demotivating devil in his ear that tells him he's not good enough to be leading the closing laps of a Crown Jewel race — and certainly not good enough to win one. And the other: a snarky, somewhat sarcastic wit that spars back with the simple notion of '(expletive) it, we can do this.' Sunday, with the sport's best talent oscillating between hugging his outside on restarts and otherwise breathing down his neck, Wallace's angel on his shoulder won out. Why the 31-year-old eight-year Cup series veteran still wars with those doubts is an introspective journey for another day. What matters is after a 100-race winless drought — two full seasons and nearly an entire third regular season — and the constant reminders he's yet to secure what would be just his second NASCAR Cup series playoff berth, Wallace can race the rest of this year and well into the future knowing he's taken the next step in his career. He slayed the dragon, snapped the streak and captured his first Crown Jewel with Sunday's Brickyard 400 victory, becoming the first Black driver to win on the IMS oval 'Does anyone know where the goalposts got moved to now? Anybody? Did they get moved yet? Oh, that's right, it was rigged. Of course,' Wallace chided in his post-race news conference, a reference to the ways in which the stockcar world's most high-profile active Black driver is held to what he believes to be either unreasonable or unfair standards by some when he falters, combined with the ways in which his successes are knocked down a peg, too. 'You're gonna have people boo you, and you're going to have people cheer you. I had a guy today call me a 'punk.' Well, punks get trophies, I guess. 'I like to have fun with the fans, and it is what it is, but I really do appreciate the support, deep down, as a guy who used to struggle with the boos and wonder 'Why?' It's just sports, and people are going to have the drivers they like and the drivers they hate, the drivers they want to see win and the drivers they want to see crash. But you've just got to go out a compete.' Entering Sunday's race, Denny Hamlin, one of the co-owners of Wallace's No. 23 Toyota, took notice of what was rounding into a notably impressive race weekend for his 31-year-old driver who had shown flashes on the IMS oval in his career but never quite been able to put it all together. Wallace started Sunday afternoon sharing the front row with Hamlin's own Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe, and as Hamlin fought tooth and nail to claw his way up from a last-place starting spot earned from a Saturday qualifying crash, he noted the way in which Wallace's No. 23 continued to hang around the top of the pylon. But to be frank, this wasn't his race … until it was, as race leader Joey Logano suffered a blown tire while leading on Lap 134 of 160, Wallace trailing behind in second. All a sudden, the two-time NASCAR Cup series race winner — whose pair of wins had never come over the course of the regular season — held the lead of the Brickyard 400 with the final round of pit stops complete and ticking by. With six laps to go and the field largely strung out, as they so often get around what some in the NASCAR community call the 2.5-mile rectangle that has hosted few race-altering passes not off restarts in recent years, Wallace looked as if he was going to win walking away, leading defending Brickyard 400 winner Kyle Larson by four seconds or more. And then, trundling through Turns 1 and 2, he saw his tires kick up water. 'My last time through, I thought to myself, 'OK then …'' Wallace said. The yellow lights flashed, quickly followed by the red, and down pit lane he drove, reflections on the way in which his breakthrough victory four years ago at Talladega came — via a rain-shortened race fiercely panned by his detractors — quickly, if not briefly, becoming top of mind. ''Here we go again. If it rains (a bunch), then Lord have mercy, Twitter's gonna blow up,'' Wallace remembered he said to himself. 'And then, it changed to this. 'I really want to win this straight up. I want to go back to racing.' So I was content with it going on. Bummed we gave up the lead. 'And then once I saw it was Larson (who he'd be restarting next to), I knew I'd have to roll my sleeves up. He won here last year. He's arguably the best in the field, and I have no problem saying that. I respect the hell out of what he does and how he drives. He pushes us all to be that good, and so to be the best, we had to beat the best today, and we came out on top.' It all sounds so prophetic now, but Wallace said Sunday morning felt eerily different as he roamed the grounds of IMS and readied himself for what in five or 10 years he might look back upon as a career-altering success for the 23XI driver. Derived by daily readings from a micro-meditation book called "The Daily Stoic" and the realities of parenthood with his baby boy Becks born in September, Wallace said he spends much of life nowadays with a reframed mindset that his life inside the cockpit is not his life alone. Whenever this job he gleefully calls little more than a hobby ends there will be a life afterwards — one filled with the joys, weights and responsibilities of parenthood and marriage that already exist. And so sometime in the last 12 to 18 months or so, Wallace said he recalibrated in a way in which managed to become more driven, but also the calmest, most even-keeled version of his professional self — a switch flip that Hamlin noted. 'His peaks and valleys, he shallowed that up to where his valleys weren't as lot, and I think it seems like on the bad days, he's able to compartmentalize that and think about the positives vs. everything sucks all the time, because that's a tough way to live,' Hamlin said. 'We're in a business where if you can win 5% of the time, you're a Hall of Famer. You're gonna lose. This is a losing business, and you've got to find happiness in something other than actually winning. 'When I hired Bubba, I believed in his capabilities — not necessarily the results that he'd shown, but I understood his potential. And then there was a time where we were wrestling with, 'Man, do I want it worse than him?' I can't make him want it. That's going to have to come from within. So what I'm hoping is this shows him that hard work pays off, and hopefully we see more of this.' What was clear within Wallace's internal monologue midday Sunday was this: He wanted it ever so badly, and not just the victory and its monkey-off-back and playoff berth implications, but for what the opportunity of success at the Racing Capital of the World invites. In his speech during Sunday's drivers' meeting, IMS president Doug Boles remarked on how the track was celebrating Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s win in the second running of the event 30 years ago, and how 10 and 20 years after, drivers we now view as modern-day legends of the sport, Tony Stewart in 2005 and Kyle Busch in 2015, triumphed, too. 'I felt different walking into that drivers' meeting and finding a seat by myself, pulling out my phone and looking at my race notes, and when (Doug) was speaking, he mentioned that little caveat, and I thought it was interesting,' Wallace said. ''This could be the start of becoming a legend.' 'Now, I don't think I'm a legend in my own mind. I've got a lot of work to do, but it all starts with days like today.' And so therein lay the confidence that managed to slay the doubts that ever so routinely surfaced as Wallace sat through an 18-minute red flag, followed by the slow trundle of additional caution laps and then not one late-race green-white-checkered restart, but two. As he characterized it, Wallace 'caught everybody sleeping on the initial overtime and wielded a comfortable lead coming down the back straight when his 23XI teammate Tyler Reddick and Zane Smith got tangled up and forced the field into a do-over. Now sitting dangerously low on fuel — so much so that a third restart likely would've forced him into the pits and left him outside the top 20, Sunday's race winner dug deeper into his proverbial toolbox, re-racked and rolled off again. 'Those last 20 laps, it was probably 20 laps of me telling myself I'm not going to be able to do it, and so I found my biggest problem, and that's that if I could shut that off fully, we could do a lot more of this,' he said. 'I really thought this year started out way different than any other, and mentally it has, but here we were in the same spot before the race. 'Is Bubba Wallace going to make it into the playoffs?' Like, 'Damn, dude, is it me?' 'There's a lot of expectations on you to deliver with this team we have at 23XI, with having the right people and the right sponsors. It takes everybody at (the shop) to have days and moments like this, and so there's a certain expectation level to win. To not be able to for almost three years, you really start to doubt yourself and wonder, 'Wow, really is this it?' After this contract is up, is this it?' I still have a couple years left now, but hopefully this gives me at least another year more.'
New York Post
2 days ago
- Automotive
- New York Post
How to watch the NASCAR Brickyard 400 live for free from Indianapolis
New York Post may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and/or when you make a purchase. It's time for the Brickyard 400, one of NASCAR's Crown Jewel races that has even higher stakes this year with the inaugural in-season challenge coming to an end. Today's race will determine which driver takes home $1 million in prize money for winning the in-season challenge. The single-elimination bracket style tournament has taken place over the past four races leading into today's Champions Round. No. 32 seed Ty Dillon and No. 6 Ty Gibbs are the last drivers standing, and whoever finishes higher will win the first-ever in-season challenge. The last driver to kiss the bricks (the traditional celebration at Indy) was Kyle Larson, who starts today's race in the 13th spot. The 400-mile race will be done in three stages of 50, 50, and 60 laps. brickyard 400: what to know When: Sunday, July 27, 2 p.m. ET Sunday, July 27, Where: Indianapolis Motor Speedway Indianapolis Motor Speedway Channel: TNT TNT Streaming: DIRECTV (try it free) Here's everything you need to know about today's NASCAR Cup Series race at Indianapolis. Brickyard 400 start time: What time is today's NASCAR race on? Today's (July 27) NASCAR race, the Brickyard 400, begins at 2 p.m. ET. How to watch the 2025 Brickyard 400 for free: If you don't have cable or an antenna, you'll need a live TV streaming service to watch the Brickyard 400 for free. One option we love is DIRECTV, which comes with five days free and starts at $59.99/month, with plenty of subscription options that include TNT. The Brickyard 400 will also stream live on Max, which you can get as a standalone service or in a bundle with Disney+ and Hulu. NASCAR Brickyard 400 starting lineup: Chase Briscoe Bubba Wallace Erik Jones Tyler Reddick Ty Gibbs William Byron Chris Buescher Carson Hocevar AJ Allmendinger Austin Cindric Shane van Gisbergen Kyle Busch Kyle Larson Brad Keselowski Joey Logano Christopher Bell Josh Berry Noah Gragson Todd Gilliland Austin Dillon Alex Bowman Michael McDowell Ryan Preece Ryan Blaney Riley Herbst Ty Dillon Zane Smith Justin Haley Cole Custer Chase Elliott Daniel Suarez Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Ross Chastain Cody Ware Jesse Love John Hunter Nemechek Josh Bilicki Katherine Legge Denny Hamlin Why Trust Post Wanted by the New York Post This article was written by Angela Tricarico, Commerce Streaming Reporter for Post Wanted Shopping, Page Six, and New York Post's streaming property, Decider. Angela keeps readers up to date with cord-cutter-friendly deals, and information on how to watch your favorite sports teams, TV shows, and movies on every streaming service. Not only does Angela test and compare the streaming services she writes about to ensure readers are getting the best prices, but she's also a superfan specializing in the intersection of shopping, tech, sports, and pop culture. Prior to joining Decider and The New York Post in 2023, she wrote about streaming and consumer tech at Insider Reviews
Indianapolis Star
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Indianapolis Star
Kyle Larson eyes another Brickyard 400 win as he returns to IMS hoping 'to do a much better job' than Indy 500
INDIANAPOLIS — Kyle Larson rolled into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 2:45 a.m. Friday morning after a night of watching his kids rip around a dirt track in Oklahoma, and even then he could feel the magic of the Racing Capital of the World. Larson's last 15 months spent at IMS have been a rollercoaster ride — the lows of a pair of attempts at the double either impacted by weather or a day-ending crash along with the highs of winning his first Brickyard 400 sandwiched in between. The Hendrick Motorsports driver enters Sunday's Crown Jewel race the defending race winner — the product of a little luck and a full head of steam racing through that final stint with no fuel save worries in the world as Larson worked his way from mid-pack to the lead as the final laps ticked away. That experience — the way in which he won and the celebrations that ensued — don't leave him approaching this weekend as the defending Brickyard 400 race winner any different, he said, but the novelty of getting to arrive late last night as the last NASCAR winner on the IMS oval isn't lost on him, either. 'I'm just happy to be back, and hopefully our car is as good again,' Larson said. 'I think it should be as fast, if not better, than it was last year, so hopefully we have good practice and good qualifying and execute a good race on Sunday.' Larson enters this weekend fresh off a result from NASCAR's most recent outing at Dover on Sunday that may not look like much in a vacuum — a fourth-place finish in a year in which Larson has won three times and finished in the top 3 six times — but it marked the No. 5 Chevrolet team's best result in two months – dating back to before Larson's second attempt at the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend. In the five previous races, Larson's crew had finished in the top 10 just once, including a pair of road course finishes at Mexico City and Sonoma outside the top 30 at the checkered flag. Similarly, he entered last year's Brickyard 400 with a run of five races with just a single top 5. 'That was good. Hopefully that's the beginning of things turning around for us,' Larson said of Dover, 'but we'll see.' 'So lucky': North Central grad living dream, from calling Indy 500 to first Brickyard 400 on TV Larson's latest trip to IMS comes on the heels of a crash-heavy Month of May at IMS that included accidents during the April open test, practice and his second Indy 500 — the latter coming on a day where the start of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing had already been delayed, meaning he was going to have to park his car before taking the checkered flag in order to be able to get to Charlotte on time for the Coca-Cola 600. The experience eventually soured the 2021 NASCAR Cup series champion on attempting the double again before he steps away from racing full-time in Cup due to the extremely tight window between the two races the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and the way in which a little patch of weather can throw a year or more's preparation from dozens of people off-kilter. Katherine Legge: She didn't get a ride for the Indy 500. It led to running 2 NASCAR races at IMS But this weekend, it's clear those emotional scars, at least publicly, don't appear to have lingered as Larson attempts to go back-to-back, which the race's most recent winner prior to Larson, Kevin Harvick, did in 2019-20, before NASCAR's IMS weekend spent three years being held on the IMS road course. 'I always love when I drive in here at night and see the top of the Pagoda and the flags all lit up. It's really cool,' Larson said of his arrival early Friday morning. 'It's great to be back here in Indy, and hopefully back in a stock car I can do a much better job than I did in May. 'It's a privilege to get to run here and race at this facility, and I would love nothing more than to have a good run and hopefully put a bow on the double stuff with another Brickyard 400 win.'
Newsweek
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Former WWE Superstar Signs With TNA Wrestling
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The TNA Knockouts division has a new member. Mara Sadè, who was known to fans as Jakara Jackson during her time in WWE NXT, has officially signed a contract with TNA Wrestling. The company confirmed the signing in a press release issued Thursday night. The announcement was made immediately after her appearance on the July 24th episode of TNA iMPACT!. An Impactful Debut On the latest episode of TNA iMPACT!, Mara Sadè was revealed as the mystery partner for The IInspiration (Cassie Lee and Jessica McKay). The trio went on to defeat The Elegance Brand in a six-woman tag team match. This was not Sadè's first time appearing on TNA programming. While she was an NXT talent, she competed at the TNA Rebellion pay-per-view in April as part of the ongoing partnership between WWE and TNA. Her familiarity with the company and its roster makes her a seamless addition to the division. More news: WWE Superstar Announces Retirement Match From Meta-Four To A New Opportunity WWE fans will recognize Sadè from her run in NXT as Jakara Jackson. She was a prominent member of the popular and arrogant faction known as Meta-Four, alongside Lash Legend, Oro Mensah, and the leader, Noam Dar. As one of the group's powerhouse enforcers, she was a regular feature on NXT television for over a year. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 11: A WWE logo is shown on a screen before a WWE news conference at T-Mobile Arena on October 11, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was announced that WWE... LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 11: A WWE logo is shown on a screen before a WWE news conference at T-Mobile Arena on October 11, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was announced that WWE wrestler Braun Strowman will face heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury and WWE champion Brock Lesnar will take on former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez at the WWE's Crown Jewel event at Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 31. More She was released from her WWE contract in May of 2025. Following her release, she stated her intention to continue her wrestling career and has been active on the independent circuit, including an appearance for 4th Rope Wrestling in France in late June. A Storied Division By signing with TNA, Mara Sadè joins one of the most acclaimed women's divisions in modern wrestling history. The TNA Knockouts division has a long legacy of focusing on serious, athletic in-ring competition. It was built by legendary champions like Gail Kim, Awesome Kong, and Mickie James. For a talented free agent like Sadè, the Knockouts division is the perfect place to carve out her own legacy and prove herself against some of the best wrestlers in the world. Her immediate alignment with fellow WWE alumni, The IInspiration, positions her as a key player in the tag team scene from day one. More WWE News: For more on WWE, head to Newsweek Sports.
