Pro wrestling star Steph De Lander spent two years on the shelf with a serious neck injury that required multiple surgeries and nearly derailed her career.

Last month, De Lander made her triumphant return to the ring. She appeared in Awesome Championship Wrestling (ACW) and was put in a triple-threat match against Indi Hartwell and J-Rod for the ACW Women’s Championship. When the dust cleared, De Lander was the one wearing the title around her waist.

“It felt awesome because there’s nothing like wrestling,” she told Fox News Digital when asked about her return. “There’s nothing like throwing yourself at the ground. There’s nothing like being body-slammed, right? I hadn’t been through that for so long. Initially, I was nervous about how my body was going to feel, how I was going to hold up. Is it going to hurt more than it did before? But it’s like riding a bike. Everyone says it but it’s so true.

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“As soon as I got back in the ring, as soon as I took my first bump, as soon as I took some hits, my body was just lit up in the best way. I hadn’t felt the physicality that you don’t get from anything else. I hadn’t felt that for so long. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I’m in the phase right now of loving getting beaten up, loving getting back in the ring. My body feels great, and I definitely felt back in my element.”

De Lander described getting involved in ACW as a bit of a whirlwind.

She said she was going to manage her husband, the pro wrestler known as Mance Warner, in a different company before WWE star Matt Cardona gave her some poignant advice.

“It was actually Matt Cardona that messaged me and was like, ‘Hey, are you wrestling this weekend? Are you cleared to wrestle yet?’ I was like, I’m cleared by I got a booking to manage Mance at a different company. And he was like, ‘Look, if you just left because you said you wanted to wrestle, you need to wrestle this weekend.’ He was like, ‘There’s an ACW show you should reach out.’ And I was like, they actually reached out to me a couple of days ago and asked if I was available, and I wasn’t,” she recalled.

“After chatting with Matt, that basically made me realize this is the opportunity to have an awesome return match at a great company. Start a run at ACW. I didn’t know I was going to be winning the championship, but I just thought this would be an awesome first match back. Having my best friend Indi Hartwell in the match, it felt very poetic.”

She pulled out of the show and eventually became the new ACW women’s champion, beating Hartwell who came into the match as the titleholder.

De Lander will be back in action for ACW on May 16 for Reckoning. The event will take place at the MJN Center in Poughkeepsie, New York.

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She will be in a tag team match with Hartwell. The two will go up against Lady Frost and Vicious Vicki.

“Indi and I have been best friends for 10 years. Our careers have paralleled each other the entire time. We worked together at WWE; we worked together at TNA,” De Lander told Fox News Digital. “We worked together on the independents in Australia, in America. We keep finding ourselves coming back together. This is another one of those situations. Despite the fact that I beat her for her championship, I think we both have a mutual understanding of what needs to be done.

“Lady Frost is coming in for the first time at ACW so that’s a wildcard. We don’t really know what to expect to see. But yeah I think it’ll be a hard-hitting match. I think it’ll be very entertaining and exciting. Indi and I have had a lot of time together as a team. We know what we’re doing in the ring. We’ll see if we know what they’re doing, but I’m anticipating a big fight. That’s for sure.”

De Lander said it was a true delight to be able to work with her best friend, and even her husband, over the last several years.

“It’s awesome. You couldn’t write it. I’ve been lucky in my career to be able to work with a lot of my close friends,” she said. “Tagging with Indi is awesome. Getting to work alongside Matt Cardona for so long was great. Getting to work with my husband Mance Warner has been awesome too. I’ve had a lot of scenarios where I’ve been able to work really closely with people that I’m close with in real life as well, and oftentimes, that chemistry does translate. It really is a dream come true.”

With Warner winning the REVOLER World Championship over the weekend, De Lander said she and her husband have their eyes on more gold.

“Oh, it’s awesome. He’s been back on this new indie run for maybe a month and he’s already won the IWTV World Championship and now the REVOLVER World Championship,” she said.

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“Between the two of us, I mean, we’re gonna have to get some new display cases because we seem to be collecting gold left and right and I don’t think we’re gonna stop anytime soon.”

Dallas Mavericks first overall pick Cooper Flagg was named the 2025-26 NBA Rookie of the Year, and it was a thrillingly close vote in the end.

Flagg narrowly beat out Charlotte Hornets’ sharpshooter Kon Knueppel, his fellow Duke Blue Devils star who went three picks later than Flagg in last year’s draft, earning 56 first-place votes compared to Knueppel’s 44. So, Flagg finished with 412 total vote points to Knueppel’s 386.

Philadelphia 76ers guard VJ Edgecombe finished in third place with 96 points (93 third-place votes), while San Antonio Spurs’ Dylan Harper and Memphis Grizzlies Cedric Coward also got third-place votes.

Flagg marked the second-youngest player to ever win the award, as the 19-year-old was only behind Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James.

For most of the season, it appeared Knueppel was going to win the award, but multiple voters came out publicly and said Knueppel’s Play-In Tournament struggles factored into them changing their minds for Flagg.

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Knueppel had just six points on 2-of-12 shooting in 34 minutes during the Hornets’ electric 127-126 overtime win over the Miami Heat at the start of the tournament. Then, in the 121-90 loss to the Orlando Magic, he shot 3 of 11 for 11 points (4 of 5 from the free-throw line as well), and he posted a minus-26 while on the court.

Flagg noted being keen on what Knueppel was doing during the year, showing love to his fellow rookie.

“I see the games every  night. I can check the box scores,” he said about watching Knueppel’s stat lines closely, per ESPN. “I think also I was watching Kon just because that’s one of my brothers.

“We had such a good connection, and we’re gonna be there for each other for the rest of our lives. I was watching him as a fan, as well, but there was obviously that competition at the same time.”

Flagg averaged 21 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game this year for the Mavericks. Those numbers had him among some NBA greats, as Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and Luka Doncic were the only rookiesMichael Jordan and Luka Doncic were the only rookies before Flagg to average at least 20 points, six rebounds and four assists since the NBA-ABA merger, ESPN pointed out. Flagg also led all rookies in scoring this season.

As for Knueppel, he dropped 18.5 points per game with 5.3 rebounds and 3.5 assists, but while Flagg had him beat in those categories, he reset the rookie 3-pointers made record with 273. That number also led the NBA this season. Knueppel was also a key piece in the Hornets getting into the Play-In Tournament to begin with, finishing 44-38 before being eliminated by the Magic.

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Flagg and the Mavs didn’t fare too well this season, finishing 26-56, though he led the team in scoring, rebounding and assists this season. Despite the losses, Flagg continued to show that age didn’t matter, becoming the youngest player to ever have games with 35, 40, 45 and 50 points.

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Alijah Arenas will withdraw his name from the NBA draft and return to USC for his sophomore season, according to a person familiar with the decision not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The former five-star prospect, whose father is NBA star Gilbert Arenas, was expected to spend just a single season at USC before declaring for the draft. But nothing went as planned during Arenas’ freshman season.

Arenas was involved in a single-car accident in April 2025 and hospitalized for six days after a Tesla Cybertruck he was driving hit a tree and burst into flames. The week that he returned to practice after the accident, Arenas learned he needed knee surgery. He didn’t debut for the Trojans until late January. And when he finally made it into the lineup, Arenas was thrown into a starring role in the middle of a brutal Big Ten slate and struggled to adjust.

Still, there were glimpses of the player that Compton Magic AAU founder Etop Udo-Ema told The Times had the potential to one day “be the face of the NBA.” Over one stretch in early February, Arenas had 29 points in a win over Indiana, scored 24 and hit a winning shot at Penn State and put up 25 points at Ohio State.

“Just the things he can do, the IQ he has, what he can see, the way that he moves, the length, the size,” Udo-Ema said, “he’s the most talented guy I’ve ever seen.”

But Arenas told The Times in late February that he was unhappy with the results of his freshman campaign to that point.

“I know what I’m capable of. And I’m not there yet,” Arenas said. “Simple as that.”

Arenas had submitted his name as an early entrant in the NBA draft, the deadline for which was Monday. But ultimately, he opted to return to USC as a sophomore, in hopes of starting anew.

Arenas returns to a roster that should be even more talented in the 2026-27 season. Guard Rodney Rice and forward Jacob Cofie also announced earlier this month that they would return, while three top-25 prospects are set to join the roster this summer.

USC also already added a trio of players in the portal, including a 7-footer in Connecticut’s Eric Reibe and an experienced starter in Georgetown’s KJ Lewis.