David Sahadi On Why Vince McMahon’s XFL Failed In 2001, Joey Janela vs. Matt Justice

Former WWE creative director David Sahadi recently spoke with The Insiders Podcast about the initial launch of the XFL in 2001 and why the Vince McMahon project failed so badly.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

David Sahadi on XFL being technically ahead of the curve: “We created such great hype that when the product came out, it didn’t move up to the hype. But technically, we were way ahead of time; we were the first football broadcast to ever use the sky cam… We microphoned players before the NFL did.”

His thoughts on why the XFL failed: “Vince didn’t really have a full idea about what this was. He had a concept. But six months had gone by and he had no full idea.”

McMahon attempted to relaunch the XFL again in 2020. After only five weeks of play in its inaugural season, the league abruptly ceased play due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

McMahon later filed bankruptcy on the XFL relaunch, and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson along with longtime business partner and ex-wife Dany Garcia, led a consortium to purchase the XFL for $15 million.

The league returned to play on February 18, 2023, and the inaugural season under the new ownership group is currently underway.

During a recent interview with Fightful, AEW alumni Joey Janela named his match with Matthew Justice as the toughest and most violent Deathmatch of his career. Janela said,

“F***, man. That’s a hard one. I think recent, actually. I think me and Matt Justice at AIW. We had a 22-minute match where I couldn’t walk afterwards. It was fucked up. [I was] getting dropped on my head, getting put through tables, getting hit in the head with chairs, doors, getting buried under guardrails, getting slammed through guardrails. It was a pretty f***ed up match. So I would go watch that on FITE+ because I showed it to a few people and they’re like, ‘Well, this match just keeps on escalating and it’s getting more and more violent, and more and more uncomfortable.’ That’s one in recent [times]. But there’s been plenty.”