BRAVE MAG

WWE SmackDown on May 8, 2026, took place at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla., and featured a funeral for the Gingerbread Man.

The go-home show for Backlash saw Danhausen search for his tag team partner for his match against The Miz and Kit Wilson. He even went as far as trying to clone himself. Talla Tonga picked up a win over Damian Priest, Ricky Saints pinned Matt Cardona, Royce Keys defeated Tama Tonga, and Fatal Influence got a six-woman tag win over Alexa Bliss, Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley, thanks to an attack from Jade Cargill, B-Fab and Michin.

Here’s the top takeaways from this week’s show:

Jacob Fatu threatens to burn the whole family tree down

Kicking off the show was Jacob Fatu, who delivered his final remarks about Roman Reigns before Backlash. The Usos joined him in the ring, where Jimmy and Jey attempted to warn Fatu one last time.

Jey told Fatu straight up that Reigns is going to "beat that ass" at Backlash, and beyond that, break him down emotionally and physically. Oh, and all of that will happen in front of his family, who will then have to acknowledge Reigns.

Fatu, of course, said none of that would happen. He went on to say that if either of The Usos interferes in the match, he’ll burn the whole family tree down.

It was good to see this lead off the show after Fatu-Reigns segments ended multiple episodes in the lead-up to Backlash. Fatu was intense as always, and his final statement really drove home how serious he is about wanting to beat Reigns without anybody else affecting the match. WWE has the chance to give Fatu a huge moment with a win, but this current creative team doesn’t seem like the group to do it, unfortunately.

Tiffany Stratton defends US title vs. Kiana James

The first match of the night was for the Women’s United States Championship with Tiffany Stratton taking on Kiana James. This match came to be when Stratton overlooked Giulia’s rematch in favor of James, which apparently didn’t sit well with the former champ.

James worked the leg early and often as the match got going. The first sign of Giulia not being on the same page was when James sent Stratton to the outside, but Giulia didn’t cause any damage when the ref wasn’t looking. A moment later, Giulia hopped on the apron to distract Stratton, but kept the ref occupied, which caused James’ rollup pin to be missed. Stratton recovered and hit her moonsault finisher a moment later to keep the title.

While this was a title match, the real story was the rift between Giulia and James. Stratton sold the leg damage, but the match wasn’t long enough to let that have a real effect on how things unfolded. We’ll see if Giulia and James can get back as a solid unit.

Massive foreshadowing for Cody Rhodes?

Cody Rhodes and Gunther look to be a thing at Clash in Italy, although it’s not signed just yet.

Rhodes entered the ring and called out Gunther. Instead, he was joined by Paul Heyman. Rhodes asked him straight up if he was acting as an "advocate" for Gunther, which Heyman denied. Heyman simply delivered the contract to Rhodes, but also dropped a line that could foreshadow what’s to come. Rhodes said that Heyman appears to be running out of options with Brock Lesnar retired, plus Roman Reigns and CM Punk want nothing to do with him. Heyman said from his perspective, he’s not the one running out of options.

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"Sooner or later, they all need the Wise Man," Heyman told Rhodes.

Then Gunther attacked from behind, but this time, Rhodes was able to fight him off. He's easy to find, hard to beat, after all.

So we know Gunther is next for Rhodes now, but the potential teaser of an alliance between Heyman and Rhodes was super interesting. Imagine if WWE finally pulls the trigger on a Rhodes heel turn and he has Heyman by his side? That would be incredible. It all seems very unlikely, but just imagine the possibility for a moment.

Gingerbread Man funeral comes with a surprise

The final segment of this week’s show was the funeral for the Gingerbread Man. Trick Williams entered wearing all black gear and his US title. GBM lay in a casket in the ring, with a choir standing close by.

Williams sang "Why did Gingerbread have to die," with assistance from the choir in the ring. Then aridiculous photo montageof GBM and Williams’ time together, with scenes ranging from GBM's "birth," to a trip to outer space, to a strip club.

Williams asked for a moment of silence, and then a frustrated Sami Zayn made his way to the ring, asking if he was losing his mind that the funeral was allowed to go on.

"Closing out an episode of SmackDown used to mean something," Zayn said. Preach.

Zayn, who didn’t appreciate all of this being a joke directed at him, questioned Williams’ budget for the funeral and criticized the choir for being off-key, which they were. Continuing his rant, Zayn promised to get Williams back tenfold before taking a cheap shot and beating down Williams.

Then GMB sat up in the casket. Turns out it was Lil Yachty inside the costume. Yachty beat down Zayn with the candy cane, and then Williams hit a Trick Shot knee, laying out Zayn.

This was the most ridiculous ending to SmackDown, maybe ever?

Zayn was spot on with the aforementioned quote. However, the surprise of Lil Yachty being inside the costume helped it all make sense, as this whole thing was to set up a surprise attack on Zayn, proving that Williams thinks a few steps ahead. Zayn’s impassioned rant was solid, but the crowd didn’t care. We’ll see what happens at Backlash, but surely there’s no way Williams gives the title back to Zayn, right?

This article originally appeared on Wrestling Junkie:WWE SmackDown: Gingerbread Man funeral, Stratton defends title

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House economists estimate that President Donald Trump’sdeals with pharmaceutical companiesto drop some of their U.S. prescription drug prices to what they charge in other countries could save $529 billion over the next 10 years.

The analysis obtained by The Associated Press includes the first economy-wide projections behind a policy at the core of Trump’s pitch to voters going intoNovember’s midterm electionsfor control of the House and Senate. Democratic lawmakers have been doubtful about the savings claimed by Trump and these new numbers are likely to trigger additional questions about the data.

Cost-of-living issues are at the forefront of voters’ concernsandhigher energy prices tied to the Iran warhave deepened the public’s anxiety. Trump has tried in part to address affordability concerns by focusing on his efforts to cut deals with companies so that the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. would no longer be dramatically higher than in other affluent nations.

“Now you have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a Friday rally before a crowd of seniors in Florida. “And that alone should win us the midterms.”

The analysis was done by administration officials for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. They also estimated that federal and state governments could save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade because of what Trump calls his “most favored nation” policy on drug prices.

Few of the details of the deals struck by the Trump administration and17 leading pharmaceutical companieshave been made public, making it hard to independently verify the projected savings. The White House analysis sought to estimate the prospective savings as more medications come onto the market and fall under Trump’s framework — with one model in the report tallying the possible savings at $733 billion over a decade.

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Trump and his Department of Health and Human Services have touted his drug-pricing deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law. Democratic lawmakers have challenged the administration’s claims of savings. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and 17 Senate Democrats in April proposed a measure requiring the administration to disclose the terms of the agreements signed by pharmaceutical companies.

“If these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public?” Wyden said when announcing the measure. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his team would share details that didn’t include proprietary information or trade secrets.

The potential savings estimated by the Trump administration would be substantial as Americans spent $467 billion on prescription drugs in 2024, according to themost recent government data available. The analysis is premised on the idea that foreign countries would also pay more for their prescription drugs, which would diversify drugmakers’ sources of revenue and preserve their ability to innovate with new treatments.

The Congressional Budget Office in October 2024 estimated that a plan similar to what Trump ended up adopting could reduce prescription drug prices by more than 5%, though the decrease “would probably diminish over time as manufacturers adjusted to the new policy by altering prices or distribution of drugs in other countries.”

The scope of the savings claimed by the Trump administration are likely to intensify the scrutiny by Democrats, who counter that any price reductions would be offset by higher costs for prescription drugs not covered by the “most favored nation” framework. One of their main critiques is that pharmaceutical companies have increased their profit margins while working with the administration.

In April, staff working for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,released an analysisthat looked at 15 of the companies that have agreed to this drug-pricing plan and found that their combined profits jumped 66% over the past year to $177 billion. The report noted that the tax cuts Trump signed into law last year “exempted or delayed many of the most expensive drugs” from price negotiations with Medicare.

The Trump administration has countered that they consider Sanders’ critique to be flawed, saying that it’s based on the list prices for pharmaceutical drugs instead the actual price that patients pay.

Health officials are optimistic that a recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship, which has tragicallyclaimed three lives,will not escalate into a wider epidemic.

While human-to-human transmission is rare for hantaviruses, rigorous contact tracing is underway across several countries to identify and monitor those potentially exposed.

Hantaviruses typically spread when people inhale contaminated residue from rodent droppings.

Though human cases are uncommon, the Andes virus implicated in the cruise ship incident poses a unique concern. This strain may, in rare instances, be capable of human-to-human spread, and viruses can change. Scientists are now urgently investigating the virus to understand potential mutations and its exact transmission pathways.

What is contact tracing?

The goal of contact tracing is to alert people who might have been exposed, keep tabs on them in case they come down with symptoms, and prevent them from spreading it to others.

The process isn’t easy because people are social and mobile creatures who spend time with others, visit crowded places and travel.

In the cruise ship outbreak, fewer than a dozen people are thought to have shown any symptoms, and there have been only five confirmed cases, but many more may have been exposed.

About 140 people remain on the cruise ship headed for theCanary Islands, where they will disembark, and none has been reported to be sick.

But authorities are trying to reach the dozens of people who left the ship about two weeks after a passenger died, but before authorities knew a hantavirus was the culprit. They were from at least 12 different countries, including from several states in the U.S. — includingArizona,California,GeorgiaandTexas, according to infectious disease experts and state public health officials.

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Authorities in St. Helena — the remote, volcanic British territory in theSouth Atlanticwhere passengers got off — said they were monitoring a small number of people considered “higher-risk contacts.” They were being told to isolate for 45 days, the St. Helena government said.

British health officials say two people who were passengers aboard the ship but flew home midway through the journey are self-isolating but do not have symptoms. The U.K. Health Security Agency said “a small number” of contacts of the two are also self-isolating but not showing symptoms.

Singaporean health authorities said they were monitoring two men who disembarked at St. Helena and flew toSouth Africaand then home. The two men, who arrived in Singapore at different times, were being tested for hantavirus and were isolated at the country’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, officials said.

The U.S. government has released few details about its work on any contact tracing.

Texas officials on Thursday said public health workers there have reached the two people who left the ship April 24, who say they are not experiencing symptoms and did not have contact with a sick person while aboard. They promised to monitor themselves with daily temperature checks and contact public health officials at any sign of possible illness, officials said.

Two Canadians who disembarked are in Ontario and have been advised to self-isolate since they returned home, the province’s health minister says.

Scientists are trying to understand theAndesvirus better

Apart from tracking people, scientists are also trying to understand the germ. The Andes virus, a member of the hantavirus family found in South America, may be one of the rare hantaviruses that can spread between people. Officials inArgentinabelieve the first cases may have been contracted on a birdwatching trip in the southern city ofUshuaia.

Argentina’s Health Ministry has yet to dispatch the team, but scientists from the state-funded Malbrán Institute planned to travel to Ushuaia “in the coming days,” the ministry told The Associated Press.

Scientists are analyzing the virus's genetics to see whether it has changed in a way to make it more transmissible.

They are also trying to learn exactly how it spreads, said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. They believe people are mainly infectious when they have symptoms, and, if the virus spreads, it may be transmitted through small liquid particles that blow out of an infected person when they talk, cough or sneeze.