title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: The rebels implemented a series of administrative changes during the uprising. Changes to the rationing system led to all citizens receiving equal rations, save for children and the sick, who received special rations. Schools closed and a curfew was set. Departments and commissariats were abolished, replaced by union delegates' boards, and revolutionary troikas were formed to implement the PRC measures in all factories, institutions, and military units.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: On the afternoon of March 2, Kronstadt delegates crossed the frozen sea to Oranienbaum to disseminate the Petropavlovsk resolution. There they received unanimous support from the 1st Naval Air Squadron. That night, the Kronstadt PRC sent a 250-man detachment to Oranienbaum but was driven back by machine gun fire. Three delegates that the Oranienbam air squadron had sent to Kronstadt were arrested by Cheka as they returned to the city. The commissioner of Oranienbaum, aware of the facts and fearing the upheaval of his other units, requested Zinoviev's urgent help, armed the local party members, and increased their rations to secure their loyalty. During the early morning hours, an armored cadet and three light artillery batteries arrived in Petrograd, surrounded the barracks of the rebel unit, and arrested the insurgents. After extensive interrogation, 45 of them were shot.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Despite this setback, the rebels continued their passive stance and rejected the advice of the "military experts"—a euphemism used to designate the tsarist officers employed by the Soviets under the surveillance of the commissars—to attack various points of the continent rather than staying on the island. The ice around the base was not broken, the warships were not released and the defenses of Petrograd's entrances were not strengthened. Kozlovski complained about the hostility of the sailors towards the officers, judging the timing of the insurrection as untimely. The rebels were convinced that the Bolshevik authorities would yield and negotiate the stated demands.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: In the few mainland places supporting the rebels, the Bolsheviks promptly suppressed revolt. In the capital, a delegation from the naval base was arrested trying to convince an icebreaker's crew to join the rebellion. Most island delegates sent to the continent were arrested. Unable to spread the revolt and rejecting Soviet authorities demands to end the rebellion, the rebels adopted a defensive strategy of administrative reforms on the island and waiting for the spring thaw, which would increase their natural defenses against being detained.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: On March 4, as delegates returned from the mainland reporting that the Bolsheviks had suppressed the real character of the revolt and instead were spreading news of a white uprising in the naval base, the assembly approved the extension of the PRC and the delivery of weapons to citizens to maintain security in the city and free up soldiers and sailors for the defense of the island.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: At a tumultuous meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, despite resistance from rebel representatives, an approved resolution called for the end of the rebellion and the return of power to the local Kronstadt Soviet. Arriving late from Siberia via Moscow, Trotsky immediately issued an ultimatum demanding unconditional and immediate rebel surrender. Zinoviev's Petrograd Defense Committee airdropped a leaflet over Kronstadt accusing the rebellion of being orchestrated by the White Army, ordering their surrender, and threatening that those who resisted would be "shot like partridges". Petrograd also ordered the arrest of the rebels' relatives as hostages, a strategy formerly used by Trotsky during the civil war to secure the loyalty of the Red Army's ex-tsarist officers, and demanded the release of Bolshevik officers detained in Kronstadt. Thus, to the rebel sailors, Trotsky and Zinoviev embodied the Bolshevik malevolence they were protesting. The rebels responded that their prisoners had full liberties and would not be released while Petrograd held families hostage. The hostage tactic also contributed to the failure of the sole attempt at mediation, as Kronstadt and Petrograd disagreed over the composition of a commission that could be sent to observe and mediate Kronstadt's conditions.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: On March 7, the extended deadline expired for accepting Trotsky ultimatum. During the wait, the government bolstered its forces and prepared an attack plan with Red Army commanders, cadets, and Cheka units. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, then a prominent young officer, took command of the 7th Army and the rest of the Petrograd troops. The 7th Army, composed mainly of peasants, was demotivated from having already defended the former capital throughout the civil war, sympathetic for the rebel demands, and reluctant to fight their comrades. Tukhachevsky had to rely on the cadets, Cheka and Bolshevik units to head the attack on the rebel island.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Kronstadt, meanwhile, reinforced its defenses with 2,000 civilian recruits atop the 13,000-man garrison. The city itself had a thick wall and across the island's forts and ships were 135 cannons and 68 machine guns. The 15 forts had turrets and thick armor. Artillery on Kronstadt's main warships, Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol, outclassed that of the most powerful mainland fort but was frozen in disadvantageous position. The base also had eight docked warships, amid other gunboats and tugboats, all rendered inaccessible by ice. Kronstadt had excellent defenses between this weaponry and the protection of vast distances of open ice. With the nearest forts far away, this frightening trek across the ice, unprotected from the island's firepower greatly unnerved the Bolshevik troops.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: The Kronstadt rebels also had their difficulties, lacking the ammunition, winter clothing, food reserves, and fuel to fend off a prolonged siege.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Bolshevik military operations against the island began the morning of March 7. Some 60,000 troops took part in the attack. Artillery strikes from Sestroretsk and Lisy Nos to the north sought to weaken the island's defenses and enable an infantry attack, which followed the next day before dawn. Amid a blinding snowstorm, Tukhachevsky's units attacked from the north and south with cadets at the forefront, followed by select Red Army units and Cheka machine gunners, who had orders to shoot defectors. Scores of Red Army soldiers drowned as the ice beneath them was blown out by explosions. Others defected or refused to advance. The few troops who reached the island were forced to withdraw. Artillery attacks resumed when the storm subsided. In the afternoon, Bolshevik aircraft began bombarding the island, but to little effect. The Bolsheviks made premature, triumphalist statements of their imminent victory, but their forces had suffered hundreds of casualties and defections due to insufficient preparation, low morale, and the danger of their unprotected approach by ice.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: A series of minor skirmishes against Kronstadt took place in the days following the failed opening salvo. While the Bolsheviks prepared additional troops with less emotional investment (cadet regiments, Communist Youth, Cheka forces, and non-Russians), Zinoviev made concessions to the people of Petrograd to keep the peace. Trotsky's closed session report to the 10th Party Congress led over a quarter of congressional delegates to volunteer, mainly to boost soldier morale, which was difficult in light of the Bolshevik strategy of sending minor, futile attempts at overtaking the island. On March 10, planes bombed Kronstadt and coastal batteries fired at the island at night in preparation for a southeast attack on the island the next morning, which failed and resulted in a large number of government casualties. Fog prevented operations for the rest of the day. Bolshevik officers, refusing to wait for reinforcement and mindful that their ice bridge would soon melt, continued to bomb the coast on March 12, causing little damage. Small troop assaults the next two days were driven back with scores of casualties. After March 14, air and artillery attacks continued but the troops waited for a larger push. Several small precursors of mutiny and work stoppage outside Kronstadt were contained during this time.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: In the period awaiting a unified attack, the mood shifted. News from Moscow's 10th Congress announced the end of War Communism. In particular, Bolshevik peasant soldiers were pleased by the cornerstone policy change, from forced requisition of all peasant surplus produce to a tax in kind, which freed the peasant post-tax to use or sell as they wished. In the same period, by mid-March, the rebels' high spirits grew dim with the realization that their cause had not spread and, with supplies dwindling, that no help was forthcoming. Kronstadt's sailors felt this feeling of betrayal long after the city fell.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: On March 16, as Kronstadt accepted a proposal for Russian Red Cross emergency food and medicine, Tukhachevsky's reinforced army of 50,000 prepared to take the island and its 15,000 rebels. Compared with prior attempts, the attackers enjoyed better numbers, morale, and leaders, including prominent Bolshevik officers Ivan Fedko, Pavel Dybenko, and Vitovt Putna. Tukhachevsky's plan consisted of a six-column approach from the north, south, and east preceded by intense artillery bombing, which began in the early afternoon. Both the "Sevastopol" and "Petropavlovsk" suffered casualties from direct hits. The effects were more psychological, on rebel morale, than physical. The bombing ended by night and, like prior attacks, the rebels anticipated foot soldiers, who arrived before dawn. Most of the Bolshevik troops concentrated south of the island to attack from the south and east, while a smaller contingent of cadets gathered to the north.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Blanketed by darkness and fog, the northern soldiers silently advanced in two columns towards the island's forts. Despite their camouflage and caution, one column was discovered by spotlight cutting through barbed wire. The rebels unsuccessfully tried to persuade their attackers not to fight, but the Bolshevik cadets carried on, charging and retreating with many deaths until they captured the first two forts. Dawn of March 17 broke the fog and cover of night. Exposed, the two sides fought with heavy casualties, mainly by machine gun and grenades. By the afternoon, the Bolsheviks had taken several forts and the cadets had reached Kronstadt's northeast wall. The final northern forts fell by 1 a.m.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: The larger southern group timed its assault to follow the northern group's lead by an hour. Three columns with machine guns and light artillery approached Kronstadt's harbour while a fourth column approached the island's vulnerable Petrograd Gate. Darkness and fog hid the shock troops from rebel searchlights, who were then able to overpower the rebels in the south of the city, but were then met by the other forts' machine guns and artillery. Caught in the open, rebel reinforcements forced the Bolsheviks to retreat. More than half of the 79th Infantry Brigade had died, including delegates from the 10th Party Congress.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: The column attacking Petrograd Gate from the east, however, was successful. One group breached the city walls north of the gate, followed by another group's march through the gate itself. Their losses had been great outside the city walls but inside they found a "veritable hell" with bullets seemingly from every window and roof. Fighting proceeded through the streets. Liberated Bolshevik prisoners joined the assault. Women supplied and nursed the defense. A late-afternoon rebel counterattack nearly drove the Bolsheviks from the city when a regiment of Petrograd volunteers arrived as Bolshevik backup. In the early evening, Oranienbaum artillery entered and ravaged the city. Later that evening, the northern cadets captured the Kronstadt headquarters, taking prisoners, and met the southern forces in the center of town. As forts fell, the battle was mostly over by midnight. The government held most structures by noon on March 18 and defeated the last resistance in the afternoon. The Bolsheviks had won.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Both sides suffered casualties on par with the civil war's deadliest battles. The American consulate at Vyborg estimated 10,000 Bolsheviks dead, wounded, or missing, including 15 Congress delegates. Finland asked Russia to remove the bodies on the ice, fearing a public health hazard after the thaw. There are no reliable reports for rebel deaths, but one report estimated 600 dead, 1,000 wounded, and 2,500 imprisoned, though more were killed in vengeance as the battle subsided. Trotsky and his commander-in-chief, Sergey Kamenev, had approved chemical warfare by gas shells and balloons against Kronstadt if the resistance continued.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Faced with the prospect of summary executions, about 8,000 Kronstadt refugees (mostly soldiers) crossed into Finland within a day of Kronstadt's fall, about half of the rebel forces. Petrichenko and members of the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee were among the first to flee, with 800 arriving before the end of the assault. The sailors' final acts were to sabotage Kronstadt's defenses, removing parts of weapons and equipment. The battleship crews, upon discovering their leaders' desertion, disobeyed their command to destroy the ships and instead arrested their officers and surrendered to the Bolsheviks.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Dybenko, a Bolshevik officer in the Kronstadt assault, was given full power to purge dissent as the Kronstadt Fort's new commander. In place of the Kronstadt Soviet, a troika of Kronstadt's former Bolshevik Party leaders assisted him. The battleships and city square were renamed and both unreliable sailors and the Bolshevik infantry alike were dispersed throughout the country.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: There were no public trials. Of the 2,000 prisoners, 13 were tried in private as the rebellion's leaders and tried in the press as a counterrevolutionary conspiracy. None belonged to the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee, of which four members were known to be in Bolshevik custody, or the "military specialists" who advised the rebel military. In practice, despite the government's continued insistence that White Army generals were behind the Kronstadt rebellion, former tsarist officers were far more prominent among the Bolsheviks than the rebels. The 13 were sentenced to execution two days after the fall of Kronstadt. Hundreds of rebel prisoners were killed in Kronstadt and when Petrograd jails were full, hundreds more rebels were removed and shot. The rest moved to Cheka mainland prisons and forced labor concentration camps, where many died of hunger or disease.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Those who escaped to Finland were put in refugee camps, where life was bleak and isolating. The Red Cross provided food and clothing and some worked in public works. Finland wanted the refugees to settle in other countries while Bolsheviks sought their repatriation, promising amnesty. Instead, those who returned were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Most of the émigrés had left Finland within several years. Petrichenko, chair of the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee, remained respected among the Finnish refugees. He later joined pro-Soviet groups. During World War II, he was repatriated and died soon after in a concentration camp.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: None of the Kronstadt rebellion's demands were met. The Bolsheviks did not restore freedom of speech and assembly. They did not release socialist and anarchist political prisoners. Rival left-wing groups were suppressed rather than brought into coalition governance. The Bolsheviks did not adopt worker council autonomy ("free soviets") and did not entertain direct, democratic soldier election of military officials. Old directors and specialists continued to run the factories instead of the workers. State farms remained in place. Wage labor remained unchanged. As in all failed revolts in authoritarian regimes, the rebels realized the opposite of their aims: harsher dictatorship, less popular self-government.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Lenin announced two conclusions from Kronstadt: political rank closure within the party, and economic ingratiation for the peasantry. Lenin used Kronstadt to consolidate the Bolsheviks' power and dictatorial rule. Dissidents were expelled from the party. Oppositional leftist parties, once harassed but tolerated, were repressed—jailed or exiled—by the end of the year in the name of single party unity. The Bolsheviks tightened soldier discipline and scuttled plans for a peasant and worker army. Lenin wanted to scrap the Baltic Fleet as having an unreliable crew but, per Trotsky, they were instead reorganized and populated with loyal leadership.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: During the 10th Party Congress, concurrent with the rebellion, Kronstadt symbolized the swelling peasant unrest towards the party's unpopular War Communism policy and the need for reform, but Kronstadt had no influence on Lenin's plans to replace War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was drafted for the Congress's agenda in advance of even the rebel's demands. Rather the rebellion accelerated its adoption. Prior to the rebellion, Lenin recognized a trend of peasant dissatisfaction and feared general revolt during the country's transition, and so conceded that a conciliatory, peasant-focused domestic economic program was more immediately urgent than his ambitions for Western proletariat revolution. The New Economic Policy replaced forced food requisition with a tax in kind, letting peasants spend their surplus as they pleased. This defused peasant discontent with War Communism and freed the Bolsheviks to consolidate power.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: The Kronstadt rebellion was the major last Russian "buntarstvo"—the rural, traditional, spontaneous, preindustrial uprisings. It clarified an authoritarian streak in the Bolshevik approach in which emergency Civil War-era measures never expired. Though the rebellion did not appear decisive or influential at the time, it later symbolized a fork in Russian history that turned away from libertarian socialism and towards bureaucratic repression and what would become Stalinist totalitarianism, the Moscow Trials, and the Great Purge. The revolution turned on each of the major Bolshevik leaders involved in Kronstadt: Tukhachevsky, Zinoviev, and Dybenko died in the Great Purge, Trotsky was killed by the Soviet secret police, Raskolnikov killed himself, and many of the congressional delegates who signed up for Kronstadt died in prisons.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: In his analysis of the rebellion, historian Paul Avrich wrote that the rebels had scant chance of success, even if the ice melted to their favor and aid had arrived. Kronstadt was unprepared, ill-timed, and outmatched against a government that had just won a civil war of greater magnitude. Petrichenko, chair of the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee, shared this retrospective criticism. Assistance from the White Army's General Wrangel would have taken months to mobilize. Avrich summed up the whole context in the


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: Soviet international diplomacy concurrent with the rebellion, such as the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement and Treaty of Riga negotiations, continued unabated. The greater threat to Bolsheviks was a wider revolt and the rebels' only potential for success, as went the unheeded advice of the rebels' military specialists, was in an immediate mainland offensive before the government could respond. In this way, the Kronstadt rebels repeated the same fatal hesitation of the Paris Commune rebels 50 years prior. Seventy years later, a 1994 Russian government report rehabilitated the memory of the rebels and denounced the Bolshevik suppression of the rebellion. Its commissioner, Aleksandr Yakovlev, wrote that Kronstadt showed Bolshevik terror as Lenin's legacy, beginning what Stalin would continue. As of 2008, their rehabilitation has not been updated in the Kronstadt Fortress Museum.


title: Kronstadt rebellion

text: In popular American intellectual usage, the term "Kronstadt" became a stand-in for an event that triggered one's disenchantment with Soviet Communism, as in the phrase, "I had my Kronstadt when ...". For some intellectuals, this was the Kronstadt rebellion itself but for others it was the Holodomor, Moscow Trials, East German uprising, intervention in Hungary, Khrushchev's Secret Speech, Prague Spring, or the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Kronstadt events are idealized in early Soviet period historiography as an example of "legitimate" popular expression.


title: Tory Belleci

text: Salvatore "Tory" Paul Belleci (born October 30, 1970) is an American television personality and model maker, best known for his work on the Discovery Channel television program "MythBusters". He has also worked with Industrial Light and Magic on films including "" and "". The Federation battleships and podracers are some of Belleci's pieces. He is currently one of the three stars of "Motor Trend"s TV show "Motor Mythbusters".


title: Tory Belleci

text: Belleci has a long history of working with fire and explosives. At an early age, his father showed him how to make a Molotov cocktail. Later, he accidentally set part of his house on fire with a homemade flamethrower. When he was 19, he was nearly arrested for setting off a homemade pipe bomb near his parents' home in Seaside, California. The officer encouraged the young Belleci to find a way of expressing his love for explosions and special effects that did not involve getting arrested.


title: Tory Belleci

text: In 1994, after graduating from San Francisco State University's film school, he started working with Jamie Hyneman at M5 Industries. Belleci worked as a stage manager, running errands and cleaning the shop, but quickly moved up the ranks. A few years later, he started work at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Belleci worked for ILM for eight years as a model builder, sculptor, and painter. Belleci began work on Discovery Channel's "MythBusters" in 2003, doing work behind the scenes and, in the second season, was featured as part of the show's build team. In the show's third season, he received on-screen credit. In 2005, Belleci persuaded fellow ILM veteran Grant Imahara to join the show, following the departure of original cast member Scottie Chapman.


title: Tory Belleci

text: Belleci worked on: the "Matrix" trilogy, "Van Helsing", "Peter Pan", "Starship Troopers", "Galaxy Quest" and "Bicentennial Man".


title: Tory Belleci

text: Belleci is often considered by fellow MythBusters Kari Byron and Grant Imahara to be more of a daredevil and, as such, often performed the more dangerous stunts when testing a myth. These have included: testing the "Red Flag to a Bull" myth; testing the myth that a human's tongue will instantly stick to a frozen pole, in the "Snow Special" episode; and the myth "can you stay underwater for an hour while breathing through a dart tube?", in the "Ninja Movie Myths 2" episode. One of his more popular stunts, shown several times on the show, was an attempt to jump over a toy wagon on a bicycle; the attempt failed, resulting in Belleci flipping forward and landing on his face. The bike almost hit Belleci's head. As a result of doing these stunts, he is often involved in comical accidents while testing myths. According to the October 28, 2012, episode of "MythBusters", he suffers from acrophobia.


title: Tory Belleci

text: During the "Hollywood Hang" sequence, of the 2010 episode "Soda Cup Killer", Belleci fell off a roof, and despite being strapped into a safety harness system, landed in an open window frame below the drop point, and injured his leg, causing substantial bleeding.


title: Tory Belleci

text: He and Byron made a guest appearance on the October 3, 2012, episode of the Discovery series "Sons of Guns". They test-fired some of the weapons in the Red Jacket shop and watched as the staff re-tested a myth previously busted by the Build Team: that a propane tank could explode if struck by a bullet.


title: Tory Belleci

text: On August 21, 2014, it was announced that Belleci, along with his co-stars Byron and Imahara, would be leaving "MythBusters".


title: Tory Belleci

text: In 2021, Belleci returned to host "Motor MythBusters" and was joined by engineer Bisi Ezerioha and mechanic Faye Hadley. The show focuses on tall tales about automobiles and last aired in March 2022.


title: Tory Belleci

text: From 2011 to 2013, he co-hosted "Punkin Chunkin" on the Science Channel with fellow "MythBusters" build team members Kari Byron and Grant Imahara.


title: Tory Belleci

text: In 2013, Belleci created a YouTube channel, "Blow It Up", where he and various guests use explosives to blow up everyday items.


title: Tory Belleci

text: In 2015, Byron and Belleci hosted "Thrill Factor", a new show for the Travel Channel. In this show they visit and showcase thrill rides around the world and explore a little bit of science such as the effect of G forces on breathing, heart rate and other factors.


title: Tory Belleci

text: Belleci stars alongside Imahara and Byron in the Netflix show "White Rabbit Project", which premiered on December 9, 2016.


title: Tory Belleci

text: Belleci starred alongside Richard Hammond ("Top Gear", "The Grand Tour") for the Amazon Video series "The Great Escapists", announced in August 2019 which was produced by Hammond's Chimp Productions. The fictional six-episode adventure series stranded the two on a deserted island via shipwreck, and the two used available resources to build out the means to survive on the island.


title: Tory Belleci

text: From June 5–11, 2014, Belleci competed with electronic dance music producer deadmau5 in the Gumball 3000 race, riding copilot in deadmau5's Ferrari 458 Spider named Purrari from Miami to Ibiza, Spain, and won top honors, taking the "Spirit of the Gumball" award.


title: Tory Belleci

text: Belleci proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Erin Bothamley, in 2018. They married in a private ceremony in 2020.


title: Tory Belleci

text: During "MythBusters"' 2010 break, Belleci volunteered time to visit Haiti. He visited orphanages and installed clean-water systems with "Life Giving Force," a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing clean water to communities in need. He communicated that the trip has had a profound effect on him and that he admires the resilience of the Haitian people.


title: Madcap Moss

text: Michael Carter Rallis (born October 10, 1989) is an American professional wrestler and former college football player. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the SmackDown brand under the ring name Madcap Moss.


title: Madcap Moss

text: Rallis was born and raised in Edina, Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he played for the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team between 2008 and 2012. He played outside linebacker for the Golden Gophers and finished third on the team in tackles during his junior year. After graduation, he attended a tryout camp with the Miami Dolphins but was not signed to a contract. In October 2013, Rallis attended a WWE tryout after contacting Jim Ross.


title: Madcap Moss

text: Rallis signed a developmental contract with WWE in early 2014 and began training at the WWE Performance Center. He made his professional wrestling debut on December 18 at a "NXT" live event in Tampa, Florida under the ring name Digg Rawlis. He made his televised debut on the May 27, 2015, episode of "NXT", working as an enhancement talent alongside Elias Samson in a defeat to Blake and Murphy. Rawlis made further occasional televised appearances as an enhancement talent during 2015, losing to The Hype Bros and Samoa Joe. In August 2015, he adopted the new ring name Riddick Moss, a tribute to former NFL player Randy Moss.


title: Madcap Moss

text: In October 2016, Moss began teaming with Tino Sabbatelli as the God Gifted Athletes; the two competed in the 2016 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, where they lost in the first round to TM61 on the October 12 episode of "NXT". Moss made a further appearance on the January 4, 2017, episode of "NXT", again teaming with Sabbatelli and losing to The Revival (Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson). The duo had their first televised victory on the October 25 episode of "NXT", defeating Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch. In early 2018, Moss and Sabbatelli entered the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, losing to Sanity in the first round. On the April 25 episode of "NXT", during a match with Heavy Machinery, Sabbatelli ditched Moss, thus ending their alliance. In May, he tore his Achilles tendon, which would require several months to recuperate. Moss returned from injury at a live event on November 30, losing to Matt Riddle after a surprise appearance. In March 2019, he started being managed by Robert Strauss at live events.


title: Madcap Moss

text: On the January 27, 2020 episode of "Raw", Moss made his main roster debut, accompanying Mojo Rawley to the ring for his WWE 24/7 Championship match against No Way Jose, where Moss was billed as Rawley's offensive lineman; Rawley lost the title to R-Truth right after defeating Jose, however, Moss assisted Rawley in regaining the title seconds later. On the February 10 episode of "Raw", after they lost to The Street Profits, Moss turned on Rawley and pinned him to win the 24/7 Championship. Moss retained his title against the likes of Rawley, Truth, Cedric Alexander, and Ricochet. On the March 23 episode of "Raw", Moss lost the title to Truth while out for a jog, ending his reign at 41 days. On the August 10 episode of "Raw", Moss returned in a Raw Underground segment, an underground fight club hosted by Shane McMahon, defeating Cal Bloom by knockout. In October, Moss revealed he had been performing with a torn ACL two months prior.


title: Madcap Moss

text: After a year out of action, in a dark match before the September 17, 2021 episode of "SmackDown", Moss returned from injury by defeating Odyssey Jones"." The following week on "SmackDown", Moss made his televised return, attacking Kevin Owens and aligning with Happy Corbin. The following week, his ring name was changed to Madcap Moss and he began adopting a comic persona. They entered into a feud with Drew McIntyre, mocking him and making jokes at his expense, leading to a match between the two at Day 1 on January 1, 2022, which Moss lost. Moss entered the Royal Rumble match at the namesake event on January 29, entering at #16 and eliminating AJ Styles, but was eliminated by McIntyre. At Elimination Chamber on February 19, Moss lost to McIntyre in a Falls Count Anywhere match. During the match, he took an inverted Alabama Slam, resulting in him landing directly on top of his head, but was able to continue the match. On the April 1 episode of "SmackDown", Moss won the 2022 André the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, last eliminating Finn Balor. On the first night of WrestleMania 38 on April 2, Moss accompanied Corbin to the ring for his match against McIntyre, which he lost.


title: Madcap Moss

text: On the April 8 episode of "SmackDown," Corbin blamed Moss for his loss against McIntyre and attacked him, ending their alliance and turning face for the first time in his WWE career. At WrestleMania Backlash on May 8, Moss defeated Corbin. On the May 13 episode of "SmackDown", Corbin attacked Moss with the André the Giant Memorial Battle Royal trophy and injured his neck, which left Moss having to be stretchered out of the arena. Moss returned on the June 3 episode of "SmackDown" with a more serious persona, new entrance music and in-ring attire. At Hell in a Cell on June 5, Moss defeated Corbin in a No Holds Barred match. On the June 17 episode of "SmackDown", Moss defeated Corbin for a third time in a Last Laugh match to end their feud.


title: Madcap Moss

text: On the July 1 episode of "SmackDown", Moss defeated Corbin, Ezekiel, and The Miz in a fatal four-way match to qualify for the Money in the Bank ladder match. At the eponymous event on July 2, he failed to win the match. On the August 19 episode of "SmackDown", Moss competed in a fatal five way match to determine the #1 contender for the Intercontinental Championship, which was won by Sheamus. At the Clash at the Castle pre-show on September 3, Moss and The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford) defeated Alpha Academy (Chad Gable and Otis) and Austin Theory. On the September 16 episode of "SmackDown", Moss challenged Solo Sikoa for the NXT North American Championship in a losing effort.


title: Madcap Moss

text: On August 4, 2022, Rallis revealed that he is dating Australian professional wrestler Tenille Dashwood, who wrestles in WWE under the ring name Emma.


title: Grubhub

text: Grubhub Inc. is an American online and mobile prepared food ordering and delivery platform. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois.


title: Grubhub

text: Founded in 2004, it is a subsidiary of the Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway since 2021. Grubhub has been criticized for antitrust price manipulation, listing restaurants without permission, and allegedly misclassifying workers. Grubhub Seamless went public in April 2014 and was traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol "GRUB".


title: Grubhub

text: As of 2019, the company had 19.9 million active users and 115,000 associated restaurants across 3,200 cities and all 50 states in the United States.


title: Grubhub

text: The original Chicago-based Grubhub was founded in 2004 by Mike Evans and Matt Maloney to create an alternative to paper menus. Two years later, in 2006, Maloney and Evans won first place in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business's Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge with the business plan for Grubhub.


title: Grubhub

text: In November 2007, Grubhub secured $1.1 million in Series A funding, led by Amicus Capital and Origin Ventures for the purpose of expanding into San Francisco and New York markets. In March 2009, Grubhub earned $2 million in Series B funding, led by Origin Ventures and Leo Capital, which was followed by $11 million in Series C funding, led by Benchmark Capital in November 2010. In March 2011 $20 million in Series D funding raise was led by DAG Ventures.


title: Grubhub

text: Grubhub's portfolio of brands includes Seamless, AllMenus, MenuPages, LevelUp, and Tapingo. Seamless is an online and mobile food ordering platform for regional restaurants active in the U.S. and London.


title: Grubhub

text: In September 2011, Grubhub secured $50 million in Series E funding and acquired New York–based competitor Dotmenu, the parent company of Allmenus and Campusfood. Grubhub completed the acquisition of AllMenus that month. MenuPages was acquired by Seamless in September 2011.


title: Grubhub

text: DiningIn, an online ordering and food delivery company based in Brighton, Massachusetts, was acquired by Grubhub in February 2015. Restaurants on the Run, a corporate food delivery company based in Aliso Viejo, California, was acquired by Grubhub in February 2015.


title: Grubhub

text: In December 2015, Grubhub acquired Delivered Dish, a restaurant delivery service in seven markets across the Pacific Northwest and Southwest, including Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego, Portland, El Paso, and Albuquerque. LAbite, a Los Angeles–based restaurant delivery service, was acquired by Grubhub in May 2016.


title: Grubhub

text: In August 2017, Grubhub entered into an agreement to acquire Eat24 from Yelp for $287.5 million, subject to regulatory review. In October 2017, Grubhub announced that had it completed its acquisition of Eat24. In late 2018 Grubhub shut down the Eat24 brand.


title: Grubhub

text: Certain assets were acquired from 11 franchisee-owned OrderUp markets in September 2018. Certain assets from 27 OrderUp markets had already been acquired in 2017. GrubHub completed its acquisition of OrderUp in October 2018.


title: Grubhub

text: LevelUp, a Boston-based diner engagement and payment solutions platform was acquired by Grubhub in September 2018. The acquisition of LevelUp was for a reported $390 million cash. Tapingo, a San Francisco–based platform for campus food ordering was acquired by Grubhub in November 2018.


title: Grubhub

text: In March 2019, Grubhub took over SkipTheDishes' operations in the United States after SkipTheDishes announced its exit from the U.S. market.


title: Grubhub

text: By mid-2020, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic where demand for services delivering food from restaurants and takeaways surged, Grubhub announced it was keeping its drivers safe by offering contact-free delivery as well as the option to order pickup for anyone who felt more comfortable getting the food themselves.


title: Grubhub

text: On June 9, 2020, Netherlands based Just Eat Takeaway announced an agreement to buy Grubhub for $7.3 billion in stock.<ref name="NYT, Conger et la 6/10/20"></ref>


title: Grubhub

text: In 1999, New York lawyer Jason Finger founded SeamlessWeb to provide companies with a web-based system for ordering food from restaurants and caterers. Six years later, in 2005, SeamlessWeb introduced a free ordering service to consumer diners to complement the existing corporate-ordering service. In April 2006, SeamlessWeb was acquired by Aramark and integrated into its Food, Hospitalities, and Facilities segment.


title: Grubhub

text: Jonathan Zabusky was named president of Seamless in 2009, and by June 2011, Seamless was re-privatized, as Boston-based Spectrum Equity Associates invested $50 million for a minority stake in the company from Aramark. The company then changed its name from SeamlessWeb to Seamless.


title: Grubhub

text: In May 2013, Grubhub and Seamless announced that they were merging, with Seamless representing 58% of the equity and GrubHub representing 42% of the equity of the combined business; the merger was finalized in early August 2013.


title: Grubhub

text: Grubhub went public in April 2014 at $26 per share. During its time as a standalone company, it traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol "GRUB".


title: Grubhub

text: In June 2014, Grubhub began offering delivery for restaurants that did not operate their own delivery service. By 2016, the company was delivering in more than 50 markets across the U.S. In July 2018, Grubhub announced that it had expanded its delivery capabilities to 28 new cities in the US.


title: Grubhub

text: Grubhub's UK competitors are Deliveroo and UberEATS. In the U.S. its competitors include Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, and EatStreet.


title: Grubhub

text: In February 2020, the company announced the launch of its new Grubhub+ monthly subscription program, which offers free, unlimited food delivery from partner restaurants for monthly fee.


title: Grubhub

text: In 2021, the company announced a partnership with Yandex to add Yandex delivery robots to Grubhub platform for food deliveries in colleges.


title: Grubhub

text: On May 12, 2020, Uber announced that it was approaching Grubhub with a takeover offer. However, on June 9, 2020, Just Eat Takeaway announced it would be purchasing Grubhub for $7.3 billion in an all-stock deal. The acquisition would create the largest online food delivery service outside of China, and provide Just Eat Takeaway with a base in the U.S. market. North American headquarters would remain in Chicago with Grubhub founder, Matt Maloney, joining the board of directors and heading North American operations.


title: Grubhub

text: On June 10, 2021, Just Eat Takeaway took operations of Grubhub as Grubhub stockholders approved Transaction with Just Eat Takeaway. The sale was completed on June 15, 2021. As part of this, Grubhub's logo was changed to include the Just Eat Takeaway house.


title: Grubhub

text: In April 2022, Just Eat said that it would consider a full sale of Grubhub after Cat Rock Capital, an activist investor, pressed the company to focus on European markets.


title: Grubhub

text: In July 2022, Amazon struck a deal with Just Eat to offer Prime customers free Grubhub+ membership for a year. The partnership allows Amazon to take a 2% stake in the company with the option to acquire up to 15% based on performance.


title: Grubhub

text: Throughout 2020, Grubhub released a series of computer-animated television commercials of people ordering food on the app. In January 2021, one of these commercials, called "Delivery Dance", became popular on the internet as a meme, with many people uploading parodies of it. The commercial shows several people dancing after ordering food from Grubhub, set to "Soy Yo" by the Colombian pop band Bomba Estereo. The commercial was panned, as it was seen as too obnoxious. Comparisons were made online between this ad and a similar ad from the grocery store chain Kroger.


title: Grubhub

text: In February 2018, US Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley found that Grubhub correctly classified plaintiff Raef Lawson as an independent contractor and rejected his misclassification claim in the "Lawson vs. Grubhub" court case.


title: Grubhub

text: In a 2017 lawsuit, attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan said that the company uses words such as "blocks" instead of "shifts" to re-label words and create a false narrative to justify its misclassification of drivers as contractors.


title: Grubhub

text: The "Wallace v. Grubhub Holdings" contractor lawsuit alleges that Carmen Wallace and Broderick Bryant and other drivers were misclassified as independent contractors and Grubhub defied wage-and-hour requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Illinois Minimum Wage Law, and the California Labor Code.


title: Grubhub

text: The plaintiffs in "Wallace v. Grubhub" claim that the work of these drivers makes them employees rather than independent contractors. Wallace and Bryant argue that drivers work on scheduled shifts, and must work in a certain area. "The drivers as a general matter cannot engage in personal non-work activities during their GrubHub shifts," the complaint states, meaning that they essentially function as employees. They also allege that they do not receive the same benefits that an employee does. Grubhub drivers are allegedly required to pay some of their expenses. Because of how they are paid, the plaintiffs claim they may often get paid below federal or state minimum wage, even when they work long hours. Many drivers allegedly work more than 40 hours a week but do not receive overtime rates for their work.


title: Grubhub

text: According to the Grubhub contractor lawsuit, the company violated several FLSA and Illinois laws by failing to pay overtime and failing to pay minimum wage. The plaintiffs filed their class-action Grubhub contractor lawsuit on June 29, 2018, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.


title: Grubhub

text: Broderick and Carmen filed the lawsuit on behalf of themselves and all others in a similar situation and the case is ongoing.


title: Grubhub

text: In 2019, the company was sued for charging restaurants fees for phone calls taking place on Grubhub-issued phone lines lasting over 45 seconds—whether they resulted in orders or not. Grubhub agreed to extend the refund window for restaurants that have been unwittingly charged for phantom orders. The restaurants themselves must review and audit call logs within the refund window in order to identify and dispute fees erroneously charged to them by Grubhub's algorithm.


title: Grubhub

text: On November 10, 2016, after the victory of President Donald Trump in the general election, Grubhub President and CEO Matt Maloney sent a company-wide memo to employees saying that he rejected the "nationalist, anti-immigrant and hateful politics of Donald Trump" and "If you do not agree with this statement then please reply to this email with your resignation because you have no place here.”"The Washington Times" reported that Maloney "unleashed a political screed after the Nov. 8 election and said that those who disagree with its anti-Trump views should resign."


title: Grubhub

text: After a Twitter boycott campaign was initiated, Maloney later claimed his words were "misconstrued", adding "I want to clarify that I did not ask for anyone to resign if they voted for Trump. I would never make such a demand. On the contrary, the message of the email is that we do not tolerate discriminatory activity or hateful commentary in the workplace and that we will stand up for our employees." In a tweet that was later deleted, Maloney added: "To be clear, Grubhub does not tolerate hate and we are proud of all our employees - even those who voted for Trump." By Thursday night, the hashtag <nowiki>#BoycottGrubHub</nowiki> was trending on Twitter. Following Maloney's statement, on November 11, 2016, the company's shares dropped 5.93%.


title: Grubhub

text: An August 2019 episode of the podcast Underunderstood reported that Yelp listings for some restaurants provide Grubhub "referral numbers" which, when called instead of the restaurant's phone number itself, facilitate the recording of the calls and can result in the restaurant being charged commission fees, even in some cases when resulting in no order.


title: Grubhub

text: In June 2019, reports came out alleging that Grubhub had registered more than 23,000 web domains in restaurants' names without their consent, in what was cast as "an attempt to generate greater commission revenue and prevent restaurants from building their online presences." Grubhub disputed the allegations, insisting that restaurants had explicitly agreed in their contracts with Grubhub to allow web domain purchases and the creation of websites advertising their businesses.


title: Grubhub

text: In April 2020, a group of New Yorkers sued DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates, and Uber Eats, accusing them of using their market power monopolistically by only listing restaurants on their apps if the restaurant owners signed contracts that include clauses that require prices to be the same for dine-in customers as for customers receiving delivery. The plaintiffs state that this arrangement increases the cost for dine-in customers, as they are required to subsidize the cost of delivery; and that the apps charge “exorbitant” fees, which range from 13% to 40% of revenue, while the average restaurant's profit ranges from 3% to 9% of revenue. The lawsuit seeks triple damages, including for overcharges, since April 14, 2016, for dine-in and delivery customers in the United States at restaurants using the defendants’ delivery apps. The case is filed in the federal U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York as Davitashvili v GrubHub Inc., 20-cv-3000. Although a number of preliminary documents in the case have now been filed, a trial date has not yet been set.


title: Grubhub

text: In October 2020, a group of restaurants launched a class-action suit against Grubhub for having included them in its listings without having asked permission (or, in some cases, despite permission having been denied), because this caused "damage to (the restaurants') reputations, loss of control over their customers’ dining experiences, loss of control over their online presence, and reduced consumer demand for their services"; plaintiffs specifically cited that Grubhub would list obsolete menus with invalid prices and/or unavailable options (leading to customer complaints) and that Grubhub refused to delist restaurants upon request. This practice was banned in California in 2021 for its abuse of restaurants.


title: Grubhub

text: On May 17, 2022, Grubhub offered a promotional code offering free lunch for those ordering in New York City. Grubhub's system and local restaurants were immediately overwhelmed after fielding nearly 6,000 orders per minute. Grubhub released a statement the same day stating they let restaurant workers know in advance, but the claim was immediately disputed by workers. Multiple outlets regarded the promotion as a "disaster," with restaurants unable to keep up with the demand and insufficient delivery workers available to pick up orders, resulting in wasted food and customers without their meals. Restaurants were left facing angry customers, refunded orders, and inability to reach Grubhub's customer service.


title: Grubhub

text: In November 2022, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro sued Grubhub claiming that the service failed to properly disclose that prices for food ordered through GrubHub could be higher than the same item ordered at a restaurant. The investigation by the attorney general's office also found that Grubhub would route web traffic from users to microsites that host a restaurant’s menu as well as third-party websites, such as Yelp or Menupages.com. Later that same month, a settlement was announced whereby Gruhub would be required to pay $125,000 to several Pennsylvania food banks and be more transparent about its pricing. As part of the settlement, GrubHub will be required to add price disclosures to their menu and checkout-pages.


title: Stephen Macht

text: As the father of actor Gabriel Macht, he portrayed Henry Gerard, a Harvard professor in the US legal drama "Suits", alongside his son.


title: Stephen Macht

text: Macht was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family. He was raised in Brooklyn Heights, New York until, at age nine, his father died and he moved with his mother, Janette, and older brother, to live with his maternal grandfather, a haberdasher, in Mystic, Connecticut.


title: Stephen Macht

text: Spotted by a Universal Studios talent scout while starring at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada in 1975, Macht was signed to a contract and by the mid-1970s had left teaching and was making frequent appearances in TV episodes and movies.


title: Stephen Macht

text: In "Raid on Entebbe" (1977), he portrayed Yoni Netanyahu, the Israeli officer killed in the rescue of hostages in Uganda. In 1978, he had a lead role in "The Immigrants", a syndicated miniseries about the rise of the son of Italian immigrants in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.


title: Stephen Macht

text: The successful television movie "American Dream" (ABC, 1981) led to a critically acclaimed short-lived series which cast Macht in the role of a family man who chucks the suburban life to set up home in the inner city of Chicago. The following season, he landed the role of Joe Cooper, brother of Karen MacKenzie (Michele Lee), on "Knots Landing" (CBS, 1982–83). Other notable roles included playing Nancy McKeon's father in "Strange Voices" (NBC, 1987). He was Benedict Arnold in the miniseries "George Washington" (1984) and played one of the survivors of an air crash in "" (NBC, 1984). He spent three seasons (1985–88) as David Keeler, love interest to Cagney (Sharon Gless), on "Cagney & Lacey" (CBS). During his run on the show, he moved behind the cameras to make his directorial debut. In 1993, Macht played Krim Aldos in "", an early Season 2 episode of "". Macht had been Gene Roddenberry's first choice to play Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "", but the role eventually went to Patrick Stewart in 1986.


title: Stephen Macht

text: More recent credits have included playing an Austrian Jew who must be baptized along with his wife and daughter in order to escape the Nazis in "A Friendship in Vienna" (1988 The Disney Channel); a doctor helping Jane Seymour in the syndicated miniseries "Sidney Sheldon's Memories of Midnight" (1991), and as cult member Joan Van Ark's suffering husband in "" (1994 NBC). Macht appeared in the 1995 third season "Babylon 5" episode "A Day in the Strife" as the character 'Na'Far'. Na'Far was the new official Narn representative, replacing G'Kar, after the Centauri's invasion of the Narn homeworld. In 1996 he did a six-month stint on the ABC daytime drama "One Life to Live" as Elliot Durban. From August 24, 2007 to February 13, 2009 he portrayed Trevor Lansing, attorney of organized crime boss Anthony Zacchara and father of attorney Ric Lansing, in the soap opera "General Hospital" for which "Soap Opera Digest" nominated him Best Villain of 2007. In 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2019, Macht guest starred opposite his son, actor Gabriel Macht, in "Suits".


title: Stephen Macht

text: Macht's work in feature films has included "The Choirboys" (1977). He also had roles in "Nightwing" (1979), "The Mountain Men" (1980), "Galaxina" (1980), "The Last Winter" (1984), "The Monster Squad" (1987), "Stephen King's Graveyard Shift" (1990), "" (1992), "The Legend of Galgameth" (1996), and "Watchers Reborn" (1998). Macht has also played Dr. Harris in three installments of the "Trancers" series of films.


title: Stephen Macht

text: Macht has been married to Suzanne Victoria Pulier, an archivist and museum curator since 1964. They have four children: Julie, Ari Serbin, actor Gabriel and Jesse, a musician. Macht is also an ordained chaplain; and his book "Moral Change: a Tragedy or a Return?: How Aristotle’s Tragic Reversal Illuminates Maimonides’ Teshuva" was published on Amazon.com in October 2016.


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalia Vila Tobella (born 25 September 1992), known mononymously as Rosalía (, ), is a Spanish singer. Born and raised in the outskirts of Barcelona, she has been described as an "untypical pop star" due to her genre-bending musical styles. After being enthralled by Spanish folk music at age 13, she studied musicology at Catalonia College of Music while also performing at musical bars and weddings. She completed her studies with honors by virtue of her collaborative cover album with Raül Refree, "Los Ángeles" (2017), and the baccalaureate project "El Mal Querer" (2018). Reimagining flamenco by mixing it with pop and hip hop music, it spawned the singles "Malamente" and "Pienso en tu Mirá", which caught the attention of the Spanish general public, and were released to universal critical acclaim. Recipient of the Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year and listed in "Rolling Stone"s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, "El Mal Querer" started the ascent of Rosalía into the international music scene.


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalía explored urbano music with her 2019 releases "Con Altura" and "Yo x Ti, Tú x Mí", achieving global success. She gave reggaeton an experimental twist on her third studio album "Motomami" (2022), departing from the new flamenco sound of its predecessor. The album caught international attention with its singles "La Fama" and "Saoko" and became the best reviewed album of the year on Metacritic.


title: Rosalía

text: Throughout her career, Rosalía has accumulated ten number-one singles in her home country, the most for a local artist. She has also won a Grammy Award, eleven Latin Grammy Awards (including two Album of the Year wins), four MTV Video Music Awards, an MTV Europe Music Award, two UK Music Video Awards and two Premio Ruido awards, among others. In 2019, "Billboard" gave her the Rising Star Award for "changing the sound of today's mainstream music with her fresh flamenco-influenced pop", and became the first Spanish-singing act in history to be nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys.


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalía was born on 25 September 1992 and raised in San Cugat del Valles, a small town in northern Barcelona, Catalonia. She is the youngest daughter of Pilar Tobella, a businesswoman who has been running a family company specialised in metalworks for decades. Her father, José Manuel Vila, was born in Cudillero, Asturias. They separated in 2019. She has an older sister, Pilar "Pili" Vila (born 1989), who works with Rosalía as her stylist and creative director. Rosalía expressed interest in the performing arts at an early age especially after discovering the discography of Camarón de la Isla. She began her professional musical education at the . She did a six-year course at the academy. She began attending class at the Raval school, later transfering to the Superior School of Music of Catalonia. She also autonomously worked as an independent singer at weddings and musical bars, for which she was paid "a little over 80 euros or in exchange for dinner". During that time, Rosalía met many underground Spanish artists who would later succeed such as La Zowi, Yung Beef, Kaydy Cain, Hinds and María Escarmiento.


title: Rosalía

text: At 15, she competed on the television show "Tú Sí Que Vales", although she wasn't selected. At 17, she had to undergo vocal cord surgery after tearing one of her vocal cords due to "intense singing practices" and was unable to sing for a year. In 2012, she became the vocalist of Kejaleo, a flamenco music group featuring Jordi Franco, Roger Blavia, Cristo Fontecilla, Diego Cortés and Xavi Turull. They released an album, "Alaire", in 2013. That same year, Rosalía professionally worked as a duo with Juan "Chicuelo" Gómez to promote the "Blancanieves" soundtrack at the 2013 Panama International Film Festival in substitution of Sílvia Pérez Cruz and at the Festival Grec de Barcelona for the contemporary dance work "De Carmen". In 2013, she participated in the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Conference in New York, and was the lead voice in the culmination of the Any Espriu 2014. In 2015, she collaborated with La Fura dels Baus on a show that premiered in Singapore. She was the opening act for flamenco artist Miguel Poveda, accompanied by Alfredo Lagos, at the International Music Festival of Cadaqués, and also at the 2016 Jerez Jazz Festival. She worked with Rocío Márquez on the presentation of her album "El Niño", produced by Raül Refree, at Primavera Sound. In 2015, she also worked with clothing brand Desigual and sang the single for their campaign jingle "Last Night Was Eternal". and self-released "Un Millón de Veces" included in the benefit album "Tres Guitarras Para el Autismo". At 20, she worked as a flamenco teacher and vocal coach.


title: Rosalía

text: In 2016, Rosalía collaborated with Spanish rapper and former boyfriend C. Tangana on "Antes de Morirme". The song was a sleeper hit and entered the Spanish Singles Chart in 2018, after the success of Rosalía's newer material. The collaboration received international attention when it was featured on the soundtrack of the first season of Spanish Netflix show "Élite".


title: Rosalía

text: In 2016, Rosalía performed to a crowd of a hundred people at the Tablao del Carmen, a flamenco specialized venue at the Pueblo Español, in Barcelona. In the audience was Raül Refree, whom she invited to the show. They began working on two albums together. Rosalía signed with Universal Music later in 2016, and she relocated to California. She went on to only release "Los Ángeles". The album talks about death in a dark way with aggressive guitar chords by Refree. It presents reworks of flamenco classics receiving several accolades. She was nominated for Best New Artist at the 18th Latin Grammy Awards. The album was released on 10 February 2017 through Universal Music and spawned two singles, "Catalina", released in October 2016, and "De Plata", released in August 2017. The album was very well received by critics. Jordi Bardají wrote on 1 November 2018 that the record was "one of the greatest 'sleepers' that Spanish sales lists have known in recent times." "Los Ángeles" reached its peak position of number nine on 11 November 2018 and has remained in the albums chart since its entry, having accumulated a total of 89 weeks. Los Ángeles won the "Album of the Year" award at the Time Out Awards and the Ruido de la Prensa Award for Best National Record, among others. In 2017, RTVE contacted Rosalía to participate in the pre-selection to represent Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017, which she declined because of scheduling conflicts with the promotion of her debut record.


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalía and Raül Refree embarked on a concert tour, Los Ángeles Tour, supporting their first studio album together. The tour began on 11 February 2017 in Granada and ended on 1 March 2018 at the Palacio de la Música in Barcelona. During the tour, in 2018, Spanish singer Bebe attended one of their concerts alongside Juanes, who became immediately obsessed with Rosalía and asked his manager Rebeca León to work with her. She agreed to manage her as she felt like she was a "once in fifty years kind of artist".


title: Rosalía

text: The recording cycle for Rosalía's second studio album, "El Mal Querer", began in early 2017 as her baccalaureate project, graduating from the Catalonia College of Music. She personally chose to work alongside Spanish musician el Guincho and spawned its concept alongside friend Ferran Echegaray, who bet on the "Romance of Flamenca" to follow the album's storyline. Thus, every song on the album would be a chapter of the story narrated in the anonymous Occitan novel. Despite having no budget to produce the record as she was an independent artist working on a university project, Rosalía invested a lot of her own money, to the point of "almost going bankrupt". However, she continued working on it, stating that "my goal was to find a way to explain this tradition that I'm obsessed with in the most personal way without fear and with risk. Before releasing the album I was in debt and had no guarantees that this would work but I had the hope that, since I was making it from my heart, whether it was a few or many, that those people that liked it, would like it for real". The album was almost completely recorded at el Guincho's apartment in Barcelona with a computer, a microphone and a sound table. It would mix traditional flamenco with today's pop and urban music.


title: Rosalía

text: In May 2018, the singer announced the title of her upcoming album in a little homemade YouTube series. J Balvin parallelly released his fifth studio album, "Vibras", which featured Rosalía on the track "Brillo". Later that month, Rosalía released the album's lead single "Malamente". The single caught the attention of international personalities such as Kourtney Kardashian and Dua Lipa and numerous music critics. In August, Rosalía was booked to perform at Madonna's 60th birthday bash but cancelled the gig after many logistic conflicts. "Malamente" was promoted at several award shows like the 2018 MTV Europe Music Awards as well as the Latin Grammys. Its music video, directed by Canada, went viral on the Internet and was named Video of the Year by "Pitchfork". The song was nominated for five Latin Grammys, out of it won two, for Best Alternative Song and for Best Urban Fusion/Performance. The follow-up single, "Pienso en tu Mirá", was released on in July through Sony Music. Its music video also went viral on social media, with praise for its aesthetics and poetic symbolism. Many Spanish portals were already talking about this as the "Rosalía phenomenon" or "hurricane Rosalía". The song was nominated for Best Pop Song at the 2019 Latin Grammy Awards. The third single, "Di Mi Nombre", released three days prior to the album, earned Rosalía her first number-one single in Spain.


title: Rosalía

text: "El Mal Querer" was released on 2 November 2018 and debuted at number two on the PROMUSICAE chart. Presented as experimental and conceptual, it revolves around a toxic relationship described in the anonymous 13th-century Occitan novel "Flamenca". The album was met with universal acclaim by music critics. Writing for "The Guardian", head critic Alexis Petridis highly commended the album, giving it the highest rating and describing it as "the calling card of a unique new talent". "El Mal Querer" was listed in over twenty album year-end and decade-end lists by publications such as "Pitchfork", "Billboard" and "The Guardian". "Rolling Stone" listed it 315th on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, making it the highest Spanish-language album in the list. "El Mal Querer" was later nominated for several awards including four Latin Grammys, a Latin Billboard Music award, a Latin American Music award and a LOS40 Music award. It won the Latin Grammy awards for Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Pop Vocal Album, Best Engineered Album and Best Recording Package. Therefore, Rosalía became the first female recipient of the Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year since Shakira in 2006. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album.


title: Rosalía

text: In 2019 Rosalía took part in the Pedro Almodóvar film "Pain and Glory". This, however, wasn't the first time Rosalía took part in an audiovisual production as she had already contributed vocals to the soundtrack of "Arde Madrid" and "Paquita Salas". In March 2019, Rosalía embarked on her first worldwide concert tour, El Mal Querer Tour, to further promote "El Mal Querer", with shows in South America, North America, Europe and Africa.While on tour, Rosalía issued several songs. On 28 March 2019, she released a second collaboration with Balvin, "Con Altura". Despite initially receiving mixed reviews from critics, "Con Altura" topped the charts in Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela and Spain. Its music video, directed by Director X, became the most-watched music video by a female artist of 2019. It also spawned her nickname "La Rosalía" and its choreography eventually became viral and a moment in Latin pop culture. "Con Altura" won two MTV Video Music Awards for Best Latin Video and Best Choreography, making her the first Spanish act to win one. It also won Best Collaboration at the 2019 MTV Europe Music Awards and Best Urban Song at the 2019 Latin Grammys. The song has sold over seven million copies worldwide so far.


title: Rosalía

text: In May, Rosalía released the song "Aute Cuture". It became her third number one in Spain and earned a Latin Grammy nomination for Record of the Year. In July, she released the single "Fucking Money Man", which includes two tracks: "Milionària" (which she sang in Catalan) and "Dios Nos Libre del Dinero". On 15 August, she released her collaboration with Ozuna "Yo x ti, tú x mí", which became her fifth number one single in Spain. In November, Rosalía released "A Palé", which features background vocals by James Blake, who she had worked earlier with on "Barefoot in the Park". In December, Rosalía was featured alongside Lil Baby on the remix of Travis Scott's "Highest in the Room". Peaking at four, this marked the first time a song of hers entered the Global Spotify chart. She was awarded the Rising Star award at "Billboard"'s Women in Music for the international recognition she achieved during the year and for "changing the sound of today's mainstream music with her fresh flamenco-influenced pop". Rosalía's performance of "Juro Que" at the 62nd Grammy Awards marked the first time a Spanish female artist performed at the gala. She also became the first Spanish-singing act in history to be nominated for Best New Artist. During lockdown, Rosalía released "Dolerme" and, in May, "TKN", her second collaboration with Travis Scott, which eventually became her first entry on the "Billboard" Hot 100, debuting at number 66, as well as the sixth number-one single of hers in her home country. The song became went viral on TikTok. The music video for "TKN", directed by Nicolás Méndez, won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. It also spawned a nomination for Best Direction at the Berlin Music Video Awards. On 22 June, Arca and Rosalía released their highly anticipated collaboration "KLK", included in the musician's album "KiCk i".


title: Rosalía

text: Recording sessions for the confection of Rosalía's third studio album started as early as 2019. Due to unforeseen circumstances from the COVID-19 pandemic, Rosalía relocated to Miami where she continued to work on the album while also providing vocals to multiple songs. On 4 September 2020, a remix of Sech's "Relación", which also features Daddy Yankee, Farruko and J Balvin, was released.earning Rosalía her second entry on the "Billboard" Hot 100, peaking at 64. She also took part in Bad Bunny's third solo studio album, "El Último Tour del Mundo", on the track "La Noche De Anoche", which was later released as a single on Valentine's Day. The collaboration, performed on "Saturday Night Live", became a huge commercial success, debuting at number two on the Spotify global chart with 6.63 million streams in a single day, marking the biggest debut for a song fully sung in Spanish in history. It also marked the ninth best debut on the platform in 2020 and the second biggest debut on Spotify Spain in music history. A week later, she collaborated alongside The Weeknd on the remix of "Blinding Lights" and, in January, with Billie Eilish on "Lo Vas a Olvidar", which was featured in a special episode of "Euphoria". She would also later collaborate with Oneohtrix Point Never and Tokischa on "Nothing's Special" and "Linda" respectively.


title: Rosalía

text: On 2 November 2021, Rosalía announced the title of her new album "Motomami". It was released on 18 March 2022 through Columbia Records. Promotion prior to the album release encompassed the release of three singles and the promotional singles "Hentai" and "Candy". The lead single "La Fama", featuring The Weeknd, is an experimental bachata that saw great commercial success. It became Rosalía's seventh number one single in Spain while also peaking at five in France and reaching the top ten spot in eight other countries. In December 2021, Rockstar Games launched a new "Grand Theft Auto Online" radio station, Motomami Los Santos, curated by Rosalía and Arca. In February 2022, Rosalía revealed the album artwork for "Motomami" and released "Saoko" as the album's second single to wide critical acclaim. The song's accompanying music video, directed by Valentin Petit, was shot in Kyiv, mainly at Podilskyi Bridge. For its editing done by Petit and Jon Echeveste, the video would go on to win the MTV Video Music Award for Best Editing. On 24 February, Rosalía released "Chicken Teriyaki" as the album's third single.


title: Rosalía

text: Upon release, "Motomami" received universal acclaim from music critics, many of whom praised the experimentation and genre-bending sounds. "Motomami" received a perfect score from various publications, including "The Telegraph", "The Independent" and "Variety" and was given four stars or more by "Clash", "Rolling Stone", "Rockdelux", "The Guardian" etc. "Pitchfork" crowned "Motomami" with its "Best New Music" honor writing, "It feels rare to hear an album that's so experimental, that aspires to stretch itself out across genres and play with form, and that attains exactly what it sets out to achieve. Rosalía was already a formidable singer, but here she also sounds like she learned that with global superstardom comes the freedom to set her own agenda". The album has become the best reviewed and most discussed album of 2022 on Metacritic. Commercially, "Motomami" entered twenty-two charts in nineteen countries and reached the top ten in seven countries, two of them number-ones. The album entered major market charts, reaching the top forty in both on the UK Albums Chart and the "Billboard" 200. On Spotify, it achieved the biggest debut for a Spanish-language album by a female artist on the platform's history, with 16.3 million streams in the first day.


title: Rosalía

text: In July 2022, Rosalía embarked on her second worldwide concert tour, Motomami World Tour, to further promote "Motomami", with shows in Europe, South America and North America. The setlist featured four unreleased tracks including "Despechá", which was later released on 28 July to global success. Rosalía later took part in the forthcoming projects by Romeo Santos, Niño de Elche, and Wisin & Yandel.


title: Rosalía

text: At the 23rd Annual Latin Grammy Awards in November 2022, "Motomami" won the four categories in which it was nominated in, which were Album of the Year, Best Alternative Music Album, Best Engineered Album and Best Recording Package. Rosalía was the first woman and sixth act overall to win Album of the Year twice as a lead artist. She also received two nominations at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album and Best Music Film for Motomami Tiktok Live. However, media such as "Rolling Stone", "Pitchfork", the "New York Times" and "W" believed that the Recording Academy and the Grammys had snubbed "Motomami" for the Album of the Year category.


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalía's music has been described as "challenging" both for her and for the listener. Denoted for the conceptuality and constant genre transformation of her albums and singles, Rosalía's music has evolved from folk to the mainstream and avant-pop. As Rosalía has a master's degree in flamenco interpretation, she started her professional career as a full flamenco singer. 2017 saw the release of her debut album "Los Ángeles", a folk record in which Rosalía "is posited as the contemporary "cantaora" who has better understood the current times". The singer has, ever since, been described as "an old soul trapped in a young body" due to the maturity of the genre. After the release of "Malamente" in May 2018, which rose the singer's popularity to a national level, her music was described as a "heavily exciting fusion of flamenco and modern arts". American magazine "Pitchfork" called the singer's voice "a soft liquid velvet" and wrote that "Malamente consumes the listener with drums and soft synthesizers that drag you to their world completely". After releasing "El Mal Querer" later that year, "The Guardian" gave it a perfect score and stated: "the Catalan singer's potent, smart second album is more complex than any Latin pop currently in the charts". During the three-year droplet era that started with the 2019 release "Con Altura", Rosalía's music evolved to a more mainstream urbano field without leaving the flamenco essence that characterizes her artistry. Described by "Rolling Stone" as "one of the most daring and reckless productions of recent years", Rosalía's 2022 studio album "Motomami" "redifined mainstream" by taking reggaeton as its main influence and blending it with traditional music of Latin America as well as with other genres such as industrial or jazz. The singer has stated that she listens to a vast catalogue of music specially when she is making a record in the urge to learn about them. Rosalía has cited the 2011 eponymous album by James Blake as one of the most impactful records of her life.


title: Rosalía

text: In his "El Mal Querer" review, "The Guardian"s Alexis Petridis wrote: "She can really sing [...] but her voice is audibly rooted in a different musical tradition to the usual styles in which pop vocalists perform. The standard set of tricks (post-Whitney extemporisation overload, sub-Winehouse aged soul, please-compare-me-to-Kate-Bush kooky swooping, etc) are all noticeable by their absence. Instead, her voice is powerful and gutsily emotive: her melismas sound more Middle Eastern than Mariah Carey." Despite her wide vocal range, Rosalía tends to use Auto-Tune aesthetically in songs and live performances.


title: Rosalía

text: The songwriting skills of Rosalía have recently been questioned and criticized for being "random" and "kitsch". Generally, her lyrics deal with various topics and contain multiple references to general and pop culture. Those references can also be seen in her visual work, which she considers the "crutial way of communication between the artist and the consumer". Graphic artist Carlota Guerrero is one of the singer's best friends. Rosalía's visual inspiration mainly comes from Spanish tradition and Oriental culture, mainly Japanese. The singer has wide knowledge of art history, which she translates to her public by constantly recreating religious portraits, contemporary paintings, and movie scenes within her musical projects. She has cited Pedro Almodóvar and Andrei Tarkovsky as her favorite filmmakers, Gaspar Noé's "Enter the Void" (2009) and Wong Kar-wai's "Fallen Angels" (1995) as her favorite films, and Jean-Michel Basquiat as her favorite artist.


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalía has been accused of cultural appropriation by some Romani people because she adapts Romani customs into her style, and she draws from the flamenco music tradition, which is often thought to be from Romani people in Andalusia. However, the origin of flamenco music is not known precisely, and it probably fused musical practices from three sources: Moorish, Jewish and Romani cultures. Responding to this criticism, Rosalía said, "music is universal."


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalía has cited Camarón de la Isla, James Blake and Kate Bush as her major musical influences. In January 2019, she told MTV "when I was 13 years old I started listening to him [Camarón de la Isla] by chance. This genre, flamenco, was what my high-school friends listened to and so did I. When I discovered him I was like 'oh my God!' I didn't think anyone was capable to sing with such a voice; it would go right through me so heartily. He was my introduction to flamenco. Thanks to him I discovered this vast universe within this music style which is almost endless and very exciting." Another flamenco influence of Rosalía is La Niña de los Peines. She states that despite not enjoying her recordings at first, she ended up appreciating her melodies and realized that she was a true pioneer since, at the time she became popular, most flamenco singers were men. She said: "flamenco is a masculine art form by tradition and there she was, with all her creativity as a woman. She became a professional at the time when it was very unusual". Rosalía cites the personal, musical and audiovisual catalogue of Kate Bush as a key influence in the musical ambition of herself citing her "genre-deconstructed compositions" and "novel artistic direction". When she was asked about the impact James Blake had on her, she said: "I started listening to him when I was at university. His music has left a mark on me; not only the bold character of his production but also its minimalism and free structures. When I listen to him, I can feel that he allows himself a lot of freedom. I personally think that he doesn't do music to please nobody but only for himself." Rosalía collaborated with Blake on his song "Barefoot in the Park", which was released as the fourth single of his 2019 album "Assume Form". She has also cited Aventura, Beyoncé, Björk, Frank Ocean, Héctor Lavoe, Kanye West, Lil' Kim, Lole y Manuel, M.I.A., Shakira, Tego Calderón, Pharrell Williams and Lauryn Hill as direct musical inspirations.


title: Rosalía

text: The biggest fashion influence of Rosalía is Lola Flores. In an interview with "Billboard" she stated: "I love her. I love the attitude and the strength she had". She also mentioned Carmen Amaya; "she used to wear masculine clothes in a moment that any woman was dancing in typically-man clothing". Rosalía has become a regular fashion show attendee, expressing her love for Palomo Spain, Dion Lee, Martin Margiela, Dapper Dan, Pepa Salazar, Matthew Williams, Alexander Wang, Burberry, Dominnico, Dior and Versace among others. She has attended the Met Gala twice, dressed in Rick Owens and Givenchy.


title: Rosalía

text: "Forbes" named Rosalía in their list of "Most Influential Spanish Women" in 2020 and in 2022. In 2021, "Pitchfork" named Rosalía one of the most important artists of the last 25 years.


title: Rosalía

text: The popularization of new flamenco, both nationally and worldwide, has allowed new artists such as María José Llergo to reach a wider audience internationally. In 2020, "The Atlantic" stated that Rosalía had "turned the harrowing music of Andalusia into a global phenomenon". Rosalía has been credited with inspiring some contemporary artists, such as Marina, Kacey Musgraves and Christina Aguilera. The resurgence of flamenco music alongside Rosalía's work has led to discussions of cultural appropriation, sometimes dubbed "the Rosalía polemic". Rosalía has been accused of stealing the culture of the Spanish Romani people ("Gitanos"), who claim this artistic expression as their own, as it has been one of the few ways of free cultural expression "Gitanos" had available to them, in the face of discrimination and persecution within wider society. Purists view flamenco performance by Catalans, non-"Gitanos", or non-Andalusians, such as Rosalía, as unfair and illegitimate. Others have defended Rosalía, saying that, in a global interconnected world, where exposure to cultural traditions and art forms are widely accessed, Rosalía's success can inspire international appreciation of this artform, and compare the situation to Madonna's use of Spanish traditions sparking international interest in Spanish culture and art.


title: Rosalía

text: "The New York Times" said in 2019: "the debate on the cultural appropriation of the Spanish singer is unfair: her music embodies, with height, the most eloquent artistic form of globalization: the remix". When asked about this topic, she responded: "I've realized that it is not that I am specifically being attacked, it is the situation where there are people who, like me, have been fortunate enough to be able to study music, which they have wanted. And having options that other people don't have", stating that this is more of a political issue and a matter of privileges. Following her win for Best Latin Video for "Con Altura" at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, Rosalía broached a related discussion, as to whether the expression "Latin" (derived from a Romance language, like Spanish) has been misunderstood and has evolved to "Latino" (person from Latin American countries previously ruled by the Spanish and Portuguese empires), extending the debate about cultural appropriation and whether she should or should not be nominated in Latin categories at award shows. Rosalía also discussed the topic at the 2020 Latin "Billboard" Music Week, where Leila Cobo, host of VP Latin, stated: ""Billboard" categorizes music sung in the Spanish language as Latin music. You are a Spanish artist, not a Latin American but your music is called 'Latin' because it is sung in Spanish. It is also very interesting to see how this term is only used in the United States". Rosalía has also said that she feels "uncomfortable" when this term is used on her. Stemming from these debates, Rosalía has received online criticism.


title: Rosalía

text: She is of paternal Asturian and maternal Catalan heritage. Her paternal grandparents were of Galician and Andalusian origin. Her great-grandfather was Cuban. She is fluent in Catalan, Spanish and English.


title: Rosalía

text: In 2016, Rosalía started dating Spanish rapper C. Tangana. They co-wrote eight of the eleven songs of Rosalía's sophomore album "El Mal Querer" and collaborated vocally twice. They broke up in May 2018. Since then, the couple has referenced each other in songs, social media posts, interviews and music videos. In April 2020, Tangana told the press that there "exists a good friendship between the two". They unfollowed each other on social media in December 2020 after Tangana talked about her quite poorly in a recorded interview for "Rockdelux".


title: Rosalía

text: In March 2020, Rosalía started dating Puerto Rican singer Rauw Alejandro. In 2022, they purchased , a modernist house built in 1905 in the outskirts of Manresa for €2.2 million, declared a cultural asset of local interest.


title: Rosalía

text: Rosalía identifies as a feminist. After being congratulated at the 2019 "Billboard" Women in Music gala, the singer stated: "I was fifteen when I entered a recording studio for the first time having all this women as references. I was so shocked by the fact that there were only men in that session that, since that moment, I've been fighting for having the same number of men and women in the studio. As simple as that". Rosalía has a garter belt buckle tattooed on her left thigh in reference to a 1970 body art performance by Valie Export. In the tattoo, the garter appears as a symbol of a past slavery, the dress as the suppression of sexuality, the garter as an attribute of a femininity not determined by ourselves. A social ritual that covers one of the physical needs, the opposition of our culture to the body is clear. The garter as a sign of belonging to a class that demands a specific behavior becomes a memory. Rosalía is also pro-choice. During a concert in Mexico, she wore a green handkerchief in support of the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion. The singer is also a firm LGBT supporter. All profits from her Viva Glam cosmetic campaign were to be given in support of women, youth and the LGBT community. In July 2021, she condemned the killing of Samuel Luiz, stating, "Samuel didn't die, he was assassinated".


title: Rosalía

text: As for Rosalía's religious beliefs, she revealed that she has never been baptized nor taken to church by her parents. Her grandmother, who was Christian, used to take her to church if she voluntarily asked to. There she began to believe in God despite never having submitted to the Catholic Church nor considering herself Christian.


title: Rosalía

text: As for politics and international conflicts, in November 2019, following a second general Spanish election in the country within six months, Rosalía tweeted "fuck Vox". Vox is a far-right nationalist political party that had earned a lot of seats at the Spanish Parliament and was constantly growing in popularity at the time. After being asked about politics at a press conference a couple days later, she said: "I think it is a very delicate topic and I don't think this is the place to talk about it." In May 2020, Rosalía expressed anger for the murder of George Floyd and briefly attended a protest in Miami in defense of racial equality, leaving early in order to appear on a virtual benefit concert organized by TeleHit. In October, she offered her song "A Palé" for a vote-encouraging campaign of Sony Music for the 2020 United States presidential election titled "Your Voice. Your Power. Your Vote".


title: History of WWE

text: The history of WWE dates back to the early 1950s when it was founded in 1953 as Capitol Wrestling Corporation (CWC). It underwent several name changes throughout the years, from CWC to World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in 1963 to World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1979, and to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 2002. Since 2011, it has branded itself solely as WWE.


title: History of WWE

text: WWE is the largest professional wrestling promotion in the world. It has promoted some of the most successful wrestlers and storylines, and featured some of the most iconic and significant matches and moments in the history of sports entertainment. WWE currently airs several high-profile programs such as "Raw" and "SmackDown" in more than 150 countries, hosts at least 12 pay-per-view events a year including WrestleMania, and holds approximately 320 live events a year throughout the world. In 2014, WWE launched the first 24/7 streaming network which would eventually showcase the entire WWE video library.


title: History of WWE

text: WWE's origins can be traced back as far as the 1950s when on January 7, 1953, the first show under the Capitol Wrestling Corporation (CWC) was produced. There is some uncertainty as to who the founder of the CWC was. Some sources state that it was Vincent J. McMahon while other sources cite McMahon's father, Roderick James “Jess” McMahon (who died in 1954) as the original founder of CWC. The NWA recognized an undisputed NWA World Heavyweight Champion that went to several different professional wrestling promotions in the NWA. The championship was defended around the world. The NWA generally promoted strong shooters as champions, to give their worked sport credibility and guard against double-crosses. While doing strong business in the Midwest (the NWA's core region), these wrestlers attracted little interest in the CWC territory. In 1961, the NWA board decided instead to put the championship on bleach blond showman "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, a much more effective drawing card in the region. The rest of the NWA was unhappy with McMahon and Toots Mondt because he rarely allowed Rogers to wrestle outside of the Northeast. Mondt and McMahon wanted Rogers to keep the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, but Rogers was unwilling to sacrifice his $25,000 deposit on the championship belt (championship holders at the time had to pay a deposit to insure they honored their commitments as champion). Rogers lost the NWA World Heavyweight Championship to Lou Thesz in a one-fall match in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on January 24, 1963, which led to Mondt, McMahon, and the CWC leaving the NWA in protest, creating the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in the process.


title: History of WWE

text: The World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) was formed on January 24, 1963. On April 25, 1963, Buddy Rogers was awarded the new WWWF World Heavyweight Championship, supposedly winning an apocryphal tournament in Rio de Janeiro. He lost the championship to Bruno Sammartino a month later on May 17, 1963, after suffering a heart attack shortly before the match. To accommodate Rogers' condition, the match was booked to last under a minute.


title: History of WWE

text: Sammartino would retain the title for seven years, eight months and one day (2,803 days), making his the longest continuous world championship reign in men's wrestling history. Although Sammartino was the face of the WWWF, wrestlers such as Superstar Billy Graham and Bob Backlund were also hugely popular. The WWWF gained notoriety in the 1970s by holding their biggest shows at Shea Stadium or Madison Square Garden and doing strong business across the entire Northeast megalopolis. They leveraged former, but still popular, wrestlers such as Captain Lou Albano, "Grand Wizard of Wrestling" Ernie Roth and "Classy" Freddie Blassie to act as managers for Sammartino's heel (villainous) opponents. At this time, only babyface (fan favorite) wrestlers were allowed to have long championship reigns, such as Bruno Sammartino, Pedro Morales and Bob Backlund, who all retained for more than one year each. The heel champions, such as Ivan Koloff and Stan Stasiak, were used to "transition" the championship from one wrestler to another, and they generally kept the title for no more than a single month-long program before dropping it to the next babyface. Graham was the only heel character to keep his championship for longer than one month, as the WWWF felt it needed time to build Backlund up as championship material.


title: History of WWE

text: The WWWF was relatively conservative for promotions of its day; running its major arenas monthly rather than weekly or bi-weekly. Programs generally involved a babyface champion facing a heel challenger for one to three meetings in each scheduled town; for longer programs the heel would often win the first match in a non-decisive manner such as a countout or via excessive blood loss, and the champion would then retain in an ultraviolent blow-off match such as a steel cage match or Texas Death match. Unlike most of the NWA territories, the main event would occur in the middle of the arena show cards, allowing the company to build upon the match's finish in order to sell tickets to the next event; reliable, popular workers such as Chief Jay Strongbow would then wrestle at the end of the show to send the crowd home happy. The WWWF also featured popular wrestlers based out of non-WWWF territories such as Dusty Rhodes and retained the services of (at the time) the most popular and highly paid wrestler in the world, André the Giant, in between his territorial and international obligations.


title: History of WWE

text: WWWF held their then major event Showdown at Shea three times at Flushing, New York's Shea Stadium in 1972, 1976 and 1980. Bruno Sammartino main evented the 1972 and 1980 events, in 1972 wrestling Pedro Morales to a 75 minutes time limit draw and in 1980 defeating Larry Zbyszko in a Steel cage match. The main event of the 1976 event was a Boxer vs Wrestler fight between Muhammad Ali and Antonio Inoki which ended in a draw. At that event Sammartino had retained the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship against Stan Hansen. The 1972, 1976 and 1980 events each had attendance figures of 22,508, 32,000 and 36,295 respectively.


title: History of WWE

text: Toots Mondt left the WWWF in the late sixties, and Vincent J. McMahon assumed complete control of the organization in 1971. Later that year, The Mongols created controversy after they left the WWWF with the WWWF International Tag Team Championship. The championship would be considered inactive as a result until Luke Graham and Tarzan Tyler won a tournament to claim the championship. They then defeated the Mongols in November 1971, voiding any claim The Mongols had to the championship. In March 1979, for marketing purposes, the World Wide Wrestling Federation was renamed as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).


title: History of WWE

text: In 1980, Vincent K. McMahon, the son of Vincent J. McMahon, founded Titan Sports, Inc. and applied trademarks for the initials "WWF".


title: History of WWE

text: In 1982, McMahon purchased Capitol Sports, the parent company of the WWF, from his father and associates Gorilla Monsoon and Arnold Skaaland.


title: History of WWE

text: Seeking to make the WWF the premier wrestling promotion in the world, he began an expansion process that fundamentally changed the industry. In an interview with "Sports Illustrated", McMahon noted:


title: History of WWE

text: Upon taking over the company, McMahon immediately worked to get WWF programming on syndicated television all across the United States. This angered other promoters and disrupted the well-established boundaries of the different wrestling promotions. In addition, the company used income generated by advertising, television deals, and tape sales to secure talent from rival promoters.


title: History of WWE

text: Capitol Sports already controlled most of the northeastern territory, but the younger McMahon wanted the WWF to be a national wrestling promotion; something the NWA did not approve of. He shortly defected his promotion from the NWA, much like the American Wrestling Association, which controlled the U.S. Northern Midwest. To become a national promotion, the WWF would have to become bigger than AWA or any NWA promotion.


title: History of WWE

text: McMahon's vision for his promotion was starting to become possible when he signed AWA talent Hulk Hogan, who had achieved popularity outside of wrestling – notably for his appearance in "Rocky III" as Thunderlips. McMahon signed Rowdy Roddy Piper as Hogan's rival, and shortly afterward signed Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Other significant wrestlers who were part of the roster included: Big John Studd, André the Giant, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, "The Magnificent" Don Muraco, Junkyard Dog, "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, and Nikolai Volkoff. In 1984, Hogan was pushed to main event status. He defeated WWF World Heavyweight Champion The Iron Sheik at Madison Square Garden on January 23, 1984, and thus evolved into one of the most recognizable and popular faces in professional wrestling.


title: History of WWE

text: With reasonable revenue being made, McMahon was able to secure television deals, and WWF was being shown across the United States. McMahon also began selling videotapes of WWF events outside the Northeast through his Coliseum Video distribution company, again angering other promoters. The syndication of WWF programming forced promotions to engage in direct competition with the WWF. The increased revenue allowed McMahon to sign more talent, such as Brutus Beefcake, Tito Santana, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Butch Reed, and "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan.


title: History of WWE

text: However, for McMahon to truly turn WWF into a national promotion, he needed to have WWF touring the entire United States. Such a venture was impossible with the revenue WWF currently had, so McMahon envisioned a way to obtain the necessary capital through a risky all-or-nothing gamble on a supercard concept called WrestleMania in 1985. WrestleMania would be a pay-per-view extravaganza, viewable on closed-circuit television and marketed as the Super Bowl of professional wrestling. WrestleMania was not the first supercard seen in professional wrestling, as the NWA had previously run Starrcade in 1983. However, McMahon's vision was to make WWF and the industry itself mainstream, targeting more of the general television audience by exploiting the entertainment side of the industry. With the inaugural WrestleMania, WWF initiated a joint-promotional campaign with MTV, which featured a great deal of WWF coverage and programming, in what was termed the "Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection". The mainstream media attention brought on by celebrities including Muhammad Ali, Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper at the event helped propel WrestleMania to become a staple in popular culture, and the use of celebrities has been a staple of the company to the present day.


title: History of WWE

text: With the success of WrestleMania, other promotions which tried hard to keep the regional territory system alive started to merge under Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP). Starrcade and The Great American Bash were the JCP versions of WrestleMania, but even when operating inside of its territory, JCP had trouble matching the success of WWF. After Ted Turner purchased majority of JCP's assets, the promotion would become World Championship Wrestling (WCW), providing WWF with a competitor until 2001, when WCW and its trademarks were purchased by WWF. WrestleMania would become an annual pay-per-view phenomenon, being broadcast in nearly 150 countries and in almost 20 different languages.


title: History of WWE

text: Perhaps the peak of the 1980s wrestling boom was WrestleMania III at the Pontiac Silverdome, which set an attendance record of 93,173. In the main event Hulk Hogan retained the WWF Championship against André the Giant. McMahon used the success of WrestleMania to create more annual pay-per-views such as SummerSlam, the Royal Rumble and the Survivor Series, the latter two both receiving their names from unique stipulation matches featured at the event. These four shows would be jointly known as the “Big Four” of the company's programming up until modern day.