The XFL is back, baby.
It’s official. ESPN reports that Vince McMahon has announced that he is reviving the professional football league known as XFL… although revive might not be the best word to describe it. As this new XFL will be very different from the original.
For those who don’t remember XFL was Vince McMahon’s first shot at a professional football league partnered with NBC for one season in 2001.
The big difference between 2001 XFL and the upcoming 2020 XFL? It won’t rely on cheerleaders and gimmicky antics.
McMahon will be the only funding source for the league, which is slated to begin in January 2020. Its first season will have eight teams around the country playing a 10-week schedule.
You may recall rumors that began flying around last year regarding Vince McMahon and the return of XFL when McMahon sold $100 million in WWE stock and put it into Alpha Entertainment. Well it looks like that speculation was correct as the initial outlay of money for the first season of XFL is expected to be around $100 million.
“I wanted to do this since the day we stopped the other one,” McMahon told ESPN in an exclusive interview. “A chance to do it with no partners, strictly funded by me, which would allow me to look in the mirror and say, ‘You were the one who screwed this up,’ or ‘You made this thing a success.'”
McMahon also commented on why he would be removing the gimmicks this time around:
“Quite frankly I looked at a number of things, but nothing resonated like the XFL. There’s only so many things that have ‘FL’ on the end of them and those are already taken. But we aren’t going to have much of what the XFL had, including the cheerleaders, who aren’t really part of the game anymore. The audience wants entertainment with football, and that’s what we are going to give them.”
We still have 2 years before the official season starts – so there will surely be much more exciting news coming around the next 2 years. Make sure to stick around to Generation Iron Fitness Network as we continue to update on this new journey of Vince McMahon’s.
