Just like The Undertaker, the XFL keeps rising from the grave
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is part of a group that has just purchased Vince McMahon’s ill-fated American football league, the XFL.
As reported by Sportico, the wrestler-turned-actor has joined up with private investment group RedBird Capital to purchase the league. Johnson’s producing partner and ex-wife Dany Garcia has also become a stakeholder.
The purchase comes just hours before the XFL was due to be auctioned off.
The XFL has long been seen as one of the great follies in modern sporting history.
It was originally founded in 1999, by WWE owner (and The Rock’s former boss) Vince McMahon, as a competitor to the NFL. McMahon was hoping to bring some sports entertainment sizzle to the stagnant world of American football.
Yet it was a colossal failure, which was widely mocked by sports fans and folded after just one season in 2001.
It was best remembered as a pop-culture punchline, and was the subject of an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary in 2017.
In 2018, McMahon announced that he would be resurrecting the XFL, this time with less tawdry gimmicks. The inaugural 2020 season was met with a much better response than its previous incarnation, but after only five weeks of play the league would come to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, never to restart.
In April, the new XFL filed for bankruptcy and was put up for sale.
Many presumed that this would be the last anyone would hear from the XFL – but now it has been purchased by one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
Can The Rock make it a success? It might seem unlikely, but Dwayne Johnson has proved to be just as good a businessman as he was a wrestler, so don’t write it off yet.
For the time being though, please enjoy this clip of The Rock cutting a promo at an original XFL game.
