Another one with sports; Knockout, brief candle

Sports seemed to dominate the pop culture mishmash of the chart in the week of May 29 – June 4, 2016, with the death of Muhammad Ali leading the chart, basketball star Stephen Curry at #6, and two football topics UEFA Euro 2016 (#7) and Copa América Centenario (#9) also placing in the Top 10. But Game of Thrones also had two slots in the Top 10 as well, and probably will until their season finale. Sadly though, the mighty AFC Wimbledon who I have mentioned before, and who amazingly did get promoted to the English Football League One, still failed to get near the Top 25. But their day is coming, I just know it.

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.

For the week of May 29 to June 4, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Muhammad Ali		4,425,310		There was no question that the death of the iconic and unique American boxer would be a huge news story. He had been in very poor health more recently, and news reports in America that he was seriously ill quickly became news of his death. For purposes of this Report, the timing of his death did raise the question of whether it occurred too late to lead the chart (which runs from 0:00 UTC Sunday to 23:59 the following Saturday each week), but it did not. Almost all of 4.4 million views this article received occurred on June 4, the last reporting day of this Report.
2	X-Men: Apocalypse		1,086,685		Hopes were high for this movie after the rapturous critical and commercial reception given to Bryan Singer's previous X-Men film, Days of Future Past; unfortunately the reviews for the followup have been largely negative, with the film struggling to reach a 60% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet, this is its third week in the top 2 (it was #1 last week), and fourth week in the top 10.
3	Game of Thrones		873,355		The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. And with last week's shock revelation, people turned to Wikipedia. With three episodes left in this season, we can expect it stay up on the chart.
4	Game of Thrones (season 6)		836,979		See #3
5	Memorial Day		490,893		The last Monday in May (which was May 30 this year), the day that the United States chose to honour its war dead, is perhaps better known as the traditional beginning of US summer vacation, and is thus eagerly anticipated by millions of people too young to serve but old enough to stand in line for action movies.
6	Stephen Curry		735,356		Curry's basketball team, the Golden State Warriors, are now in the 2016 NBA Finals.
7	UEFA Euro 2016		671,655		The quadrennial international football event kicks off in France on June 10.
8	Deaths in 2016		628,824		The annual list of deaths, always a fairly consistent visitor to this list, is often in the Top 10 this year. The views of this article are remarkably consistent on a day to day basis, with close to 100,000 views a day. Views went up slightly with the news of the death of Muhammad Ali (#1) on June 4, to 125,826 views for that day. When Prince died, views did substantially jump to 275K for one day (April 21). But substantial jumps like that are not driving the solid regular popularity of the article, which makes it a regular part of the Top 25.
9	Copa América Centenario		614,036		The 45th edition of the Copa América football tournament is being held in the United States this year, the first time the competition has been held outside its South America territory, and began on June 3. This horde of non-Americans crossing the southern border generated an Argentinian advertisement lampooning Donald Trump.
10	Lotte Reiniger		591,857		A Google Doodle on June 2 celebrated the birth (in 1899) of German film director Lotte Reiniger, a pioneer in animation, and best known for silhouette animation. Her film The Adventures of Prince Achmed was released in 1926, over ten years before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

It's not uncommon for this list to become a parade of the dead; death is random, and often falls in quick succession. But as far as I remember, this is the first time the top three slots have been due to recent death. One, Muhammad Ali, the final end of a long, respected and bountiful life; another, Kimbo Slice, the result of the strange random happenstance that seems to be the Reaper's hallmark. And then there's Christina Grimmie, a death so infuriatingly senseless and cruel that calling it tragic is too forgiving. Outside these commemorations, our readers were mainly interested in traditional summer distractions: sports, movies and, of course, Game of Thrones.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of June 5 to 11, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Muhammad Ali		5,313,604		As I've said before in this article, I do not like sports. I do, however, like words, and while Muhammad Ali might not have been a wordsmith on par with, say, Yogi Berra, his beat-downs to beat and put-downs to poetry were often works of quiet wonder, and prefigured the braggadocio and diss tracks of hip-hop culture, with the added bonus of being backed up by actual talent and effort. So, let me, as a writer, let him speak his own epitaph: Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see. I’ve wrestled with alligators; I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning and throw thunder in jail. My face is so pretty, you don't see a scar, which proves I'm the king of the ring by far. Folks, don't block the gate, don't close the door, for you may all go home after round four. To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of gold. The Greeks said, "You're better than the Cassius of old." OK, so he occasionally needed to work on his scansion. Note: If the numbers for the two days from last week are added in, the total is 9.74 million, which, in the Wikipedia Hall of the Dead, places Ali above Robin Williams but below Prince or David Bowie.
2	Kimbo Slice		1,918,617		The immensely popular boxer and mixed martial artist who got his start in true Millennial style by posting street fights on Youtube, died this week at the age of just 42. The immediate cause of his death was heart failure, though the ultimate cause is still unclear.
3	Christina Grimmie		1,581,651		Some things are difficult to talk about. It is a sad fact of American life that, just as people's lives can rise on a dime, so they can end. That a minor singing celebrity who had built her entire career on her relationship with her fans could be brought down by a single, random, misfiring member of her fandom who happened to have a gun is both tragic and infuriating. That it happened in Orlando, Florida now feels like a strange prelude.
4	UEFA Euro 2016		1,457,928		For the latest go round, held in France, the European international football tournament has been expanded from 16 to 24 teams, which means that most of the British Isles (bar Scotland) are competing together for the first time in decades. Of course, England's fans marked the occasion with a bit of hooliganism, as if the referendum weren't enough of a snub to Europe.
5	Copa América Centenario		997,904		The exhibition tournament between all ten members of CONMEBOL (the South American football federation) and six members of CONCACAF (the North American football federation) to celebrate 100 years of the South American international cup, the Copa America, kicked off on June 3.
6	Game of Thrones (season 6)		870,174		The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. With three episodes left in this season, we can expect it stay up on the chart.
7	The Conjuring 2		771,532		Fans of the supernatural may take some issue with the veracity of demonologist ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren, but there's no denying that The Conjuring, the first film based on their case files, was a highly effective (and highly successful) spookfest. The sequel, which reunites stars Vera Farmiga (pictured) and Patrick Wilson, has proven just as popular, with a solid 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and $91 million worldwide grossed in just three days.
8	Phoebe Snetsinger		767,213		The first person to observe and document over 8,000 bird species got a Google Doodle on her would-have-been 85th birthday on 9 June.
9	Warcraft (film)		723,881		Duncan "son of David Bowie" Jones's ode to the video game franchise he apparently loves has not wowed critics, with Rotten Tomatoes ranking it as the second-worst-reviewed film of the US summer season (the worst reviewed, if you're wondering, was the horror flick The Darkness, with just 5%, a score even Warcraft can look down on). Unsurprisingly, its domestic performance has been anaemic, coming in second to The Conjuring 2; its international performance, particularly in China, has, however, been fairly stellar, so Jones may come out of this with his well-earned good reputation intact.
10	Stephen Curry		699,006		This week, the basketball player for the Golden State Warriors and current MVP weathered some fierce criticism on social media for some ill-advised sneakers and three below-par games in a row, but appears to have bounced back in his latest game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.