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BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Kyle Larson maybe could have won his first Sprint Cup race in just his ninth start. He could have pulled a super-aggressive move on Kyle Busch and go checkers-or-wreckers at California at that race in March 2014.If he had taken that chance and somehow made a desperate move work, he wouldnt have had to answer questions over the next 89 races about when would he win his first Cup race since coming on the scene.The Chip Ganassi Racing driver also could have won in race 88 at Dover in May if he roughed up Matt Kenseth. He settled for second again, the fourth time he finished second in a Cup race.But Larson wanted a noble win. He didnt want any questions. He wanted to have the respect of the racers who have shown respect to him.He never even seemed all that upset about it. He just went on to the next race as he has throughout his career. Larson never appeared flustered about anything, even after it was his race car that was ripped apart in a 2013 Xfinity Series crash at Daytona International Speedway and injured dozens of fans.The 24-year-old either has ice in his veins or knew a day such as Sunday at Michigan International Speedway would come along. It was a day where it appeared he would finish second to another driver looking for his first Sprint Cup win, as Chase Elliott led the previous 22 laps before a restart with nine laps remaining in the Pure Michigan 400.On the restart, Larson got a good push from Brad Keselowski -- Larson had the lead before Elliott could get to the start-finish line -- and never looked back.And then came the tears in the car. Plus a couple of minutes of screams after he passed the checkered flag. All those comments about what he should have done when dont matter anymore. They are behind Larson, like much of the dirt that he has sprayed in winning a slew of sprint car races before making the move to NASCAR.I started shaking, [my] legs a little numb there for a couple laps, Larson said. I think with two to go, I was starting to get choked up.We worked really, really hard to get a win, and just havent done it. Finally all the hard work by everybody, hundreds of people at our race shop, people who have got me through to the Cup Series, it was all paying off.Some of that hard work could have been rewarded in previous stops at Michigan. In June 2015, he pitted shortly before NASCAR called the race because of rain. Last June, Joey Logano -- a veteran at 26 years old -- beat the 20-year-old Elliott and Larson to the finish line.Elliott and Larson then battled it out again Sunday, leaving Elliott -- the driver who replaced Jeff Gordon this year -- with the bitter disappointment and frustration once again while Larson celebrated.Id be lying if I said I wasnt [feeling that way], Elliott said about being disappointed and frustrated. If I wasnt, that would mean I didnt care. ... Theres no guarantees in life.Theres certainly no guarantees in racing.Even some of those pulling for Elliott could appreciate it for Larson, recognizing the path that created such an emotional postrace celebration.Its bittersweet today because Im a huge Kyle fan, said Gordon, an equity owner in Hendrick. I love that guy. Hes an amazing talent.But he beat the 24 [car] today. I was pulling for Chase. ... The first thing I was thinking when I saw Chase and I was looking out at Larson, these two are going to be doing this a lot throughout their careers. Thats great for the sport.Dale Earnhardt Jr., watching from home as he missed his sixth consecutive race because of a concussion, tweeted his congratulations to Larson even after he beat his teammate: Always liked his driving style and the person he is outside the car. Well deserved.Maybe the one who appreciated it the most was another racer looking to snap a winless streak. Chip Ganassi put his faith in Larson, seeing him as the next great talent, signing him in February 2012 and tapping him to replace Juan Pablo Montoya in 2014.Ganassis last win in a Cup start had come 100 races earlier. The car owner had won races in five other motorsports series this year, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans but hadnt won a Cup race since Jamie McMurray?won one in October 2013.When he came to our team, people said, Well, hell hang around for a couple years, then hell go to a team where he can win, Ganassi said. That wasnt the case at all. ... To say hes the foundation of the team? Anytime you have a young guy come along that can win, sure, you want to rally around that.It takes a lot of things these days to build your team and keep your team together. A day like today goes a long way to be that mortar in between all the bricks that keeps everything pulled together. Its a big day.With Larson the foundation of the teams future -- Ganassi doesnt talk about the contract status of his drivers but the indications are Larson is signed beyond this season -- both Ganassi and Larson said they dont see him going anywhere.I owe everything to him for why Im here today, Larson said. I was just racing sprint cars and midgets in 2011 in Indiana. ... I have a ton of respect for [the team] and love racing for the organization.I kind of like being the underdog, I guess you can say. Our team isnt up there, isnt considered with Hendrick or Penske or Gibbs. Were right below them. But I like that. I think everybody at our race shop likes that. I think it kind of drives them to work harder and push the limits of building faster race cars.The knock on Larson was that he couldnt put a full race together, that as a sprint-car driver used to shorter feature events, that he didnt have the mentality to win the marathon-like Sprint Cup affairs or to do what he needed to do to win.If anyone is saying that about him, they dont know what theyre talking about, said Larson teammate Jamie McMurray.Larson has probably heard every reason why he hasnt won. He expressed his relief in the only way a racer knows how -- with a huge, epic burnout in celebration of his win, a win that came 21 days since the death of his friend and fellow sprint-car racer Bryan Clauson.Its good to be able to parked it in Victory Lane, like [Clauson] would have said, Larson said. He didnt like people doing burnouts and stuff like that because he wanted you to act like youve been to Victory Lane before.But I hadnt been to Victory Lane before. So I was going to do some burnouts.It easily could be said that he earned the right to do burnouts, even if it tore up his own car a little bit. He had spared some other potential race-winning cars that type of damage by being the gentleman racer and earning his first win -- and a Chase for the Sprint Cup berth -- with no questions about whether he deserved it.The way my rookie season started, coming close a few times, not getting it done, you can visualize the win that early in your career: Its going to happen, its going to happen, Larson said. But it just never happened.This ones different just because of how long we had to wait and how much harder Ive had to work for it. Its special because all the hard works paid off. Air Max 95 Sale Nz . Galatasaray said in a statement on its website Monday that Mancini signed a three-year contract and will be paid 3.5 million euros for the upcoming season, with his salary upped to 4. 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The Survivor Series hype train is full speed ahead and Tuesdays episode of SmackDown Live offered some serious shakeups to the Survivor Series teams, including the addition of Shane McMahon to the mens 5-on-5 match.Since the WWE brand separation draft in mid-July, theres been very little crossover between WWE Raw and SmackDown. There was a singular co-branded effort in August at SummerSlam, but since that point, each show has felt like its own unique entity, through each shows ups and downs.SmackDown Live, despite its smaller roster and shorter broadcast (but partially because of it) stepped up to the plate and provided a platform for stars such as?AJ Styles to shine brightly, while also giving young up-and-comers all of the time they could want to prove and improve themselves.After thriving in independence, perhaps it shouldnt come as a surprise that during the last couple of weeks of intertwining stories with Raw, that there was a bit of an awkward transition. But by the close of the show Tuesday, SmackDown Live had returned to the kind of cohesive storytelling and logic behind actions that helped make it so watchable before the brand split.The beginning of the show was a bit of a bait-and-switch situation, although SmackDown Live opened in very much the same way that Raw did this week by presenting all of the members of the mens Survivor Series team and laying out all of the internal conflict between the team members. Styles, as team captain and WWE world champion, kicked things off by claiming that Dean Ambrose cheated, laying into James Ellsworth and a list of other offenses against them, but happy to set them aside to take on Raw.He was just ramping things up when Baron Corbin interrupted him, and in that moment it became clear just how much of a carbon copy SmackDowns team was to Raws. There was the heel champion, the No. 1 contender, the big guy outsider who was out for himself and two top stars within a partnership that could be exploded into a million pieces at the first real sign of trouble.For as much as the stakes beyond show vs. show pride havent been defined, there is a lot to look forward to in this particular match. Theres the matter of the two world champions going head to head for the first time since the brand split, the inevitable Braun Strowman interaction with his old mentor Bray Wyatt, and Ambrose going up against his former Shield brethren Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins.It was a nice piece of foreshadowing that Corbin excused himself from a six-man tag team match later in the evening, only to have to back out of the match due to injury (and more on that in a bit). That match, which ultimately ended up closing the show, had on display the best and worst of what SmackDown has had to offer in the last few months.On the one hand you had Ellsworth, who inserted himself into the Survivor Series match as the teams mascot early in the night, getting one of the biggest reactions of the night from the crowd in Glasgow, Scotland. Hes been used almost to excess, but not quite, and SmackDown has gotten the absolute most out of the diminutive Ellsworth. On the other hand, theres Kane, still getting in there in high-profile conflicts simply because theres no one else on the roster to fill that spot. He looked particularly slow and choppy in this match and spent the majority of the match as the guy in the ring for his team -- something that did him, the show and the fans no favors. He can still have value, even at this point in his career, but hes currently overused and overexposed -- and that needs to change.As soon as the match ended and tensions boiled over, Shane McMahon ran out to the ring and tried to calm tensions. It made all the sense in the world for Daniel Bryan to insert McMahon himself as the fifth man, as SmackDown Live, despite the problems between its members, now has a centering force that should help make up for some of the gap in star power between the two Survivor Series squads.Both Raw and SmackDown did a pretty good job at shuffling the Survivor Series deck around this week, switching out team members to keep at least minimal stakes riding on a match that otherwise might have been filler in the lead-up to the pay-per-view. While Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar will inevitably steal a lot of the headlines in Toronto, the build to the three traditional Survivor Series matches has made the outcome somewhat nebulous and unpredictable -- setting the stage for one or more of these matches to really define the nights action.Add in a pair of cross-branded title matches and Survivor SSeries is quickly shaping up to be a big enough show to fill up its four-hour time slot -- up and down the card.ddddddddddddHits and misses? The Womens championship video package with Becky Lynch and Alexa Bliss helped tell the story well and served its purpose as a hype mechanism. It highlighted just how good Bliss has been in this rivalry. It has helped elevate her from a seemingly overmatched rookie, as she was when she was drafted, to a real player in the SmackDown womens division. The transformation of her character had a lot to do with her pairing with Blake and Murphy in NXT, but her road to becoming No. 1 contender and feud with Lynch has helped showcase just how far her in-ring work has come.All that said, calling a match that airs midway through the show a main event, be it a weekly program like SmackDown or a pay-per-view event, is just a little bit disingenuous. It seems like its a move that WWE is making more often, especially in the case of multiple main events, but theres really little reason that a six-man tag team match, rather than a womens championship match, should have closed out the show in the traditional main event spot.As for the match itself, the beginning was slow but deliberate, as Bliss worked over Lynchs left arm. Bliss hit a few of her signature moves that seem to get sharper every week, including a backflip into double knees. The match was incredibly stiff at times, especially in their exchange of forearms midway through the match, and things seemed to be picking up momentum when they hit a sudden end. Bliss getting to the ropes out of sight of the referee and tapping with her leg on the bottom rope is an easy way to carry this rivalry on through TLC, and I think thats good for both women involved.? Its hard to say whether the Raw or SmackDown women will have more trouble keeping the peace with their teammates, as the Naomi-vs.-Natalya match with Nikki Bella on commentary quickly devolved into heated outside of the ring action between Nikki and Carmella.? Breezango has been doing some strange backstage segments as the fashion police that have only really aired online, as well as a surprisingly long segment on this weeks episode of Talking Smack. The combination of those outfits and kilts seemed to make that pairing the de facto faces in their match with The Vaudevillains, but as nice as it was for them to qualify for Survivor Series, it was largely just another sad indication of just how far The Vaudevillains have fallen.? The return of Kalisto after a long layoff was nice, and it was nice to see him not simply serving as cannon fodder for Corbin again despite an attack before their match even begun. Its been a big head-scratcher to see Sin Cara continue to participate in the cruiserweight division on Raw despite his dubious weight qualification. while his former tag team Kalisto wallowed away on SmackDown without much to do. Its likely a pipe dream to imagine that Brian Kendrick, a bright spot in a cruiserweight division trying to find its identity, would drop the title and allow the division to move to SmackDown, but its a fun thing to try to imagine. Itll be great to see how the pair works in the ring.? The Miz made the briefest of appearances on SmackDown Live proper this week, with Miz refusing to communicate directly with either Bryan or McMahon. He whispered to Maryse as his go-between, and she ultimately accepted an Intercontinental championship rematch on next weeks 900th episode of SmackDown Live. On Talking Smack, Maryse again spoke for Miz when she all but demanded a trade to Raw, which Bryan acknowledged and seemed to embrace. Whether or not these kinds of arrangements will become reality remains to be seen, but the simple mention of the possibility is an appreciated nod to the possibility of some roster-shuffling in the near-future.? Speaking of the 900th episode of SmackDown, well have the return of The Undertaker and a Cutting Edge segment with Edge to look forward to, along with the Intercontinental title match. It should be a fun blow-off as the final show before Survivor Series, and Im sure well get The Dead Mans opinions on the upcoming Lesnar-Goldberg showdown before all is said and done.? Curt Hawkins, a former Edge-head (along with Zack Ryder) might get to revisit some history with Edge next week, but he finally got himself a victory Tuesday with a roll-up over Apollo Crews. Not much else to be said, and thats a fact. ' ' '