Welp guys and gals, we arriving to a part of the year where we will be pulling out every trick in the book to make sports happen. Football is on hiatus, basketball has crowned a national champion, we’ve got baseball…. Who knows in the upcoming weeks you may see coverage of Field Hockey! Curling! Cricket! Water Polo!
Lets go!!!!!!
Baseball
Ole Miss started out the baseball week in rough fashion. On Tuesday the Rebels hit the diamond against North Alabama to only see a loss in the final. The Lions took the victory from the home team Rebels 10-6. Max Cioffi was charged with the loss from the mound allowing 5 runs on 6 hits in 3.2 innings pitched. With that Mike Bianco ripped the review window out of the car and looked ahead to the daunting weekend series with the Florida Gators. In baseball it’s best to have short term memory, luckily for the Rebels that was the case as they took the series sweep over the Gators with finals of 12-4 (Friday), 16-4 (Saturday Game 1), and 12-10 (Saturday Game 2). This week the Rebels face Southern Miss in Pearl (as of this writing the Rebels are up 7-2 in the top of the 8th inning). The weekend series will see Ole Miss host the Kentucky Wildcats who are setting at 17-15 overall.
For the Mississippi State Bulldogs the mid-week obliteration continued. The final for their game with the ULM Warhawks ended 21-8. The focus then shifted to the weekend series where the maroon and white traveled to “Rocky Top” to face off with the Tennessee Volunteers. Friday’s victory for MSU would take 11 innings but the result would be accepted with a final of 6-3. Jake Mangum would go into the history books in this game as he became the Bulldogs all time hits leader with 337. This also pushed Mangum to top 5 in the conference all time. Saturday would be a pitchers duel however, this time would go in favor of the Vols. The 2-1 final would see Peyton Plumlee charged with the loss allowing 2 runs (1 earned) over 5 ⅓ innings. Sunday the Bulldogs would clinch the series with the 7-5 victory. This week MSU hosts South Alabama on Wednesday night, followed by a weekend series hosting the Alabama Crimson Tide for the annual Super Bulldog Weekend.
Football
The big news in football was that the Alliance of American Football chairman, Tom Dundon, made the decision to cease operations immediately. So for Memphis, Birmingham, and the other 6 teams the inaugural season came to an unexpected a disappointing halt. The AAF brought much excitement in the first week of competition, however, with being on obscure networks and live streams that people had to search through their listings for made it extremely difficult for the customer to become invested in the product. Going forward, what does this mean for the re-emerging XFL in 2020? Can anyone else co-exist in the world of professional football with the NFL? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Check back later this week as we will review and give some thumbs up and thumbs down on the Ole Miss Grove Bowl from last Saturday.
WWE
Hey I told you from the get go we are going to get adventurous!
It just so happens that Vince McMahon and company correlated their schedule with this article to have their biggest show of the year! The showcase of the immortals, Wrestlemania.
This year’s spectacle took place at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey in front of 82,265 fans. For those of you, like me, who can’t afford the trip to New York and the lowest price tickets of $165 per person, you probably took to the couch with the $9.99 a month WWE Network. The show pushed a whopping 7 hours! So there’s the details now how about some match results?!
- Tony Nese defeated Buddy Murphy for the Cruiserweight Championship
- Carmella won the Women’s Battle Royal
- Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins defeated The Revival for the Raw Tag Team Championships
- Braun Strowman won the Andre The Giant Battle Royal
- Seth Rollins defeated Brock Lesnar for the Universal Title
- A.J. Styles defeated Randy Orton
- The Usos defeated The Bar, Aleister Black & Ricochet, Shinsuke Nakamura & Rusev to retain the Smackdown Tag Team Titles.
- Shane McMahon defeated The Miz in a falls count anywhere match
- The IIconics defeated Sasha Banks & Bayley, Nia Jax and Tamina, Natalya & Beth Phoenix for the Women’s Tag Team Titles
- Kofi Kingston defeated Daniel Bryan to win the WWE Championship
- Samoa Joe defeated Rey Mysterio to retain the U.S. Championship
- Roman Reigns defeated Drew Mcyntire
- Triple H defeated Batista in a No Holds Barred Match with Triple H’s career on the line.
- Baron Corbin defeated Kurt Angle in Kurt Angle’s farewell match
- Finn Balor adorned his demon persona and defeated Bobby Lashley to win the Intercontinental Championship
- Becky Lynch defeated Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey to win and unify the Raw and Smackdown Women’s Titles.
Wrestlemania 35 fun facts:
The 82,265 fans in attendance set the WWE-MetLife Stadium attendance record.
The IIconics (Peyton Royce and Billie Kay) won their 1st ever championships as singles or tag team competitors.
Kofi Kington’s WWE Championship win is the first of his 11 year career and he is only the 2nd African American competitor to hold the tile (prev. The Rock) and is the 1st Native African American to wear the WWE Championship.
Roman Reigns got his 1st singles pay per view victory since returning from his battle with leukemia.
Becky Lynch, Ronda Rousey, and Charlotte Flair became the first women competitors to headline Wrestlemania in it’s 35 year run.
That’s all this week!
