Tony Khan Calls Vince McMahon’s XFL Relaunch a “Terrible Idea” and AEW Was the Better Bet

Vince McMahon decided to bring back the XFL in 2018 after it first failed in 2001, but history repeated itself because the relaunch was also an epic fail. In light of XFL’s failure, Tony Khan made it clear that he believes McMahon’s decision to restart the XFL was a terrible idea.

While speaking to Ilana Golan on Leap Academy, Tony Khan stated that Vince McMahon’s decision to bring back the XFL influenced his own decision to start AEW. He thought that restarting the XFL was a bad idea because the NFL is very strong and hard to compete with.

When the XFL went bankrupt, Tony Khan felt his judgment was correct. He believed that a second wrestling league would work better since there are many wrestlers available and the quality of wrestlers in a new league would be much higher than what the XFL could offer. He felt wrestling needed a second league more than football did.

“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?

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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.”

After its failure, XFL was bought by The Rock back in 2020 and in November 2023, it merged with the USFL. Regardless, fans felt Tony Khan clearly made the right choice to start AEW in 2019 since it has truly changed the course of pro wrestling in a big way.

With AEW continuing to grow leaps and bounds every year in various ways, it’s clear that Khan’s gamble on a second wrestling promotion has paid off and the sky is truly the limit for AEW now.