10 Ridiculously Ambitious WWE Ideas That Failed Horribly
1. The XFL
The XFL was such a catastrophe that it really does warrant a list entry all of its own.
The year 2000 would have been the WWF's most profitable of all time, were it not offset by the catastrophic losses suffered by the league. What's monumentally irritating about that fact is that it allows Vince Russo a loophole through which to crow about his overseeing the most profitable period in company history, as if he was solely responsible and there weren't two Hulk Hogans on the roster. Technically, he's right, even though there was a Vince McMahon filter in place. Moreover, the Chris Kreski-led direction did yield more (squandered) money with just one of the aforementioned Hogans; Steve Austin was shelved for most of the calendar year.
Anyhow, tangent over: the XFL really was a miserable, miserable failure - even a "colossal failure" in McMahon's own words - the same McMahon with the grapefruit-sized balls to wave off WrestleMania VII's poor ticket sales as a measure of Sgt. Slaughter's supposed heat.
A concussion-triggering opening scrambling salvo, a terrible standard of play, plummeting attendances resulting from that - the league summarily failed to dent the popularity of its much bigger brother, even though they didn't share the same bedroom.