Thread: Vince McMahon's XFL 2.0 to be announced today
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Old 01-25-2018, 12:26 PM   #9
Evil Vito
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While XFL is going to be the headline-grabber, I think this is a potentially much bigger, wider-reaching story.

1. It's Vince diversifying his stock, creating a whole other company (advertising "investment opportunities"), that he's going to great lengths to state is outside of the WWE Umbrella. A big part of me sees that and thinks "tax dodge"/"inheritance nest egg".

2. WWE shareholders are, historically, very jumpy at the idea of Vince McMahon not being involved with WWE any more - stock plummeted when Trump "bought" Monday Night RAW. There's a perception that Vince can't do anything but wrestling, and that nobody but Vince can do wrestling

So while telling everyone that this isn't coming from WWE money obviously seems like a way to appease shareholders who might get scared at the idea of a disastrous XFL relaunch, that doesn't completely wash with me, because it still suggests a Vince who, if only out of necessity, will be considerably less involved with WWE.

3. Vince setting up his own company, separate from WWE, and separate from WWE shareholders, makes me think he's at least more open to the idea of selling up than he's ever been before. He's seen the sale of UFC go through, and seen that it hasn't materially affected Dana White's position in the company.

I don't necessarily think he will sell, but I think he's actually thinking about it rather than simply dismissing the thought as he would have a few years ago. With media mergers and buy-outs the talk of the day, and Vince not getting any younger, I can see this being his time to finally sell up - particularly with FOX shopping around and in dire need of content.

4. And this might be the big one. Vince started registering football-related trademarks around the same time that Trump started openly criticizing the NFL. The first obvious thing to come to mind is that Vince is canny enough to capitalize on that, and know that having an alternative league would play well with Trump, and with Trump supporters - who might want to boycott the NFL, but have a tough time committing to it due to them lacking a "Trump-friendly" alternative to shift their attentions to.

The alternate, and frankly more fun explanation, is that Vince moved first. Vince began the groundwork for an XFL reboot, and put in a word with Trump, who began using his platform to systematically undermine the NFL in the eyes of his supporters.

In another lifetime, "Vince McMahon is exerting his influence on the President of the United States" would be an utterly bonkers theory - but we know they're close. And, while Trump spends all his time on Twitter, he only actually follows around 50 people; take out members of his family, his staff, Trump businesses, and FOX News hosts, and you're down to single figures. One of those he follows is Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
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