professional Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

A division-consuming storyline may be the platform that AEW's women’s roster needs to launch
A rising tide lifts all boats, so they tell me. The tide on the women’s side of AEW, for pretty much its entire three-plus-year existence, seemed pretty stagnant, with the occasional spike that promised more but rarely delivered a change in altitude. While not wanting to put too much on her shoulder...

WWE hits the right notes, even if it can’t play the song
You’d be forgiven if you thought that WWE falls into its best long-term storytelling by accident, including in last night’s Royal Rumble. It’s so fixated on providing “moments,” where the crowd pops to a riotous level and (these days) social media starts spinning and buzzing like a slot machine. Wha...

Asuka must win the Royal Rumble
I’m not stupid. Well, I’m not that stupid. At least some of the time, when the few neurons I have left fire at the same time. I know Rhea Ripley is winning the Royal Rumble on Saturday. You know Rhea Ripley is winning the Royal Rumble on Saturday. And that’s not a bad thing! She’s great. But it shou...

Sami Zayn must win the Royal Rumble
WWE kicks its Wrestlemania season into fifth gear this week with Saturday night’s Royal Rumble. Even those who have soured on the product New York has been putting out come back in for the Rumble — for the most part — due to its uniqueness and penchant for surprises, and setting up what the build to...

Wide Right: The biggest missed kicks in NFL playoff history
About halfway through the fourth quarter of Saturday’s Wild Card game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars, Chargers’ kicker Cameron Dicker missed a seemingly insignificant field goal wide left. No matter though. The Chargers were up 10, and with so little time, three points wou...

The 8 remaining NFL playoff teams ranked
We’re down to the final eight. No one would’ve picked some of the teams still playing to be here at the beginning of the season, while others were givens. Yet, all are three wins away from winning the Super Bowl. The defending champions never looked the part and the defending runners-up are still pa...

What does You Can Play actually do?
The thing that organizations like the Philadelphia Flyers, or the NHL, or the You Can Play Project, is that the stories they hope will just go away never do in the timeframe they’re counting on. They continue to fester, and everyone’s inaction on it only prolongs this. The Flyers and their coach, Jo...

If you can't beat 'em, hurt 'em?
Anytime the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers get together, it’s a big deal for both franchises and the fan bases. But one radio host for 105.3 The Fan in Dallas chose to make it a little too personal by wishing injury on an opposing player. One of the hosts for “GBag Nation,” The Fan’s afterno...
![Jay Briscoe, indy wrestling legend, dead at 38 [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/0cc585ef8fb2dceb088cb500046ab8cd.png)
Jay Briscoe, indy wrestling legend, dead at 38 [Updated]
One-half of the best professional wrestling tag team of all-time to never get a chance in a major promotion died Tuesday night. Jay Briscoe was involved in a fatal car crash in Laurel, Delaware. Briscoe, whose real name was Jamin Pugh, was 38....
![Ivan Provorov, John Tortorella once again show that hockey can’t move forward [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/e5c7510945e9755bf115def070b35df0.jpg)
Ivan Provorov, John Tortorella once again show that hockey can’t move forward [Updated]
This is becoming, sadly and infuriatingly, a familiar story in sports. The NHL wants you to believe that “hockey is for everyone,” except that it never seems to filter down to anyone in the game below the tagline....

Dolphins sport worst-ever NFL beanies in Sunday's tie-dye affair
I found myself getting distracted several times while watching the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins’ Wild Card weekend matchup. This time it wasn’t from fans hurling ice chunks at Dolphin players but it was by what Mike McDaniel was wearing on his head....

Washington Commanders: QB1 — A New Hope
If only Washington could’ve seen its quarterback calamity coming. In early March when the Commanders struck a deal with the Colts to acquire Carson Wentz to be its next starting QB, it was correctly seen as kicking the can down the road. It was even more obvious when the season opener rolled around ...

NFL gets it right picking Atlanta as venue for possible Bills-Chiefs AFC Championship game
The NFL didn’t actually mess this one up. My apologies for bracing for impact on anything the league does these days, especially when it involves Buffalo. The league announced that a possible AFC Championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills would happen at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Be...

In the end, we worked ourselves
It was such a perfect setting for Mercedes Moné, the former Sasha Banks, to arrive on AEW Dynamite last night. It’s not that Tony Khan could have possibly known ahead of time that the previous night, WWE would be awash in rumors and reports that they were selling to the Saudi PIF (later denied, thou...

What has — and hasn't — been confirmed about the reported WWE sale to the Saudis
A Tuesday night Twitter storm gave way to endless speculation that WWE would be sold to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. It whipped professional wrestling fans into a frenzy, nearly blinding them to the denial that a sale had been completed by several prominent figures in wrestling media. The...
