If you’re autoconfirmed (account more than 4 days old with at least 10 edits), you can create new pages without going through the drafts/approval phase first. But they would still usually be swiftly deleted if not following policies and guidelines.

Yes, that also caught me as a bizarre thing to say. Sadly low bar for sports journalism

Should be noted this is a fan account, his official one is @ZohranKMamdani