AEW President Tony Khan thinks Vince McMahon’s decision to revive the XFL in 2018 was a major misstep—and one that helped inspire Khan to launch All Elite Wrestling. Speaking on Leap Academy with Ilana Golan, Khan said that McMahon’s attempt to compete with the NFL directly influenced his own strategic thinking.
“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,” Khan said.
He questioned the viability of challenging a juggernaut like the NFL:
“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.”
Tony Khan Explains Why Wrestling Needed an Alternative—Not Football
Khan went on to explain that professional wrestling was more in need of competition than football, and that the talent pool made it far easier to start a rival promotion in that space.
“There are way more wrestlers out there to start a second wrestling league. 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,” he said.
He added that wrestling fans, unlike football fans, were more eager for an alternative:
“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.”
XFL’s Collapse and What Followed
The XFL filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and was later sold to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. In November 2023, it merged with the USFL in an effort to consolidate spring football in the United States.
Khan’s AEW, meanwhile, has grown into a legitimate competitor to WWE, establishing weekly TV shows, major events, and an international fan base.
AEW is currently valued at $2 billion and is the 3rd most valuable combat sports company in the world today.
LATEST: WWE Is Targeting AEW Once Again
MUST READ: Mariah May Leaves AEW To Join WWE
