In January 2018, Vince McMahon announced he would be relaunching the XFL. The original XFL lasted one season in 2001, but McMahon wanted to give it another go nearly two decades later.
Tony Khan, whose father Shad owns the Jacksonville Jaguars, took note of McMahon wanting to launch the XFL. One year after McMahon's announcement of an XFL return, Tony officially announced the formation of AEW in January 2019.
Speaking to Ilana Golan on Leap Academy, Tony explained how Vince's decision to relaunch the XFL influenced his decision to launch AEW.
"In 2018, the McMahon family announced they were going to relaunch the XFL. That probably also had an effect on my thinking because that sounded like a terrible idea to me. The amount of money they were going to put into it, when the NFL is such a dominant competitor and the NFL is so strong, and I was proven right because the XFL did go bankrupt, I thought, 'That's not going to work.' You know what would work? A second wrestling league. There are way more wrestlers out there to start a second wrestling league. If I built a challenger wrestler league, the roster of that league would be so much better, comparatively, than the roster of the XFL. It wouldn't even be close. As a viewer of the sport, as somebody who loves football and wrestling, wrestling needs a second league a lot more than football does. I think we were proven true of that," said Tony.
The XFL was eventually purchased by The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) in August 2020 and would merge with the USFL in November 2023.
AEW is set to celebrate the six-year anniversary of its first show wth AEW Double or Nothing on Sunday. Fans can check out the lineup for the event by clicking here.
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