AEW Called “XFL to WWE’s NFL” in New Comparison

Tony Khan may have launched AEW as a response to Vince McMahon’s failed XFL reboot—but according to wrestling veteran Konnan, the metaphor might’ve flipped back around.

Speaking on the Keepin’ It 100 podcast, Konnan drew a comparison between WWE and AEW, stating that WWE is still the dominant force—like the NFL—and AEW is still the underdog, comparing it directly to the XFL.

“And you see the difference in the product, right?” Konnan said. “So I just think that at the end of the day, you know, you’re the XFL to the NFL—and that’s the way it’s going to be. And it’s probably never going to change unless something drastic happens.”

His comments come years after Tony Khan publicly criticized Vince McMahon’s decision to relaunch the XFL in 2018, calling it a “terrible idea.” Speaking to Ilana Golan in 2025, Khan explained that watching the XFL fail reaffirmed his belief that wrestling—not football—needed a strong secondary league.

“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?

You know what would work? A second wrestling league,” Khan said at the time. “There are way more wrestlers out there to start a second wrestling league… Wrestling needs a second league a lot more than football does.”

Konnan’s analogy hits hard, especially given Tony Khan’s original stance on why the XFL was doomed. While AEW has changed the wrestling landscape in many ways, questions remain about whether it can ever truly compete with WWE on a global scale—or if it’s destined to play second fiddle.

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