In 2001, the owner of the World Wrestling Entertainment, Vince McMahon, made the announcement that he would be starting his own football league that would separate itself from the already well-established NFL.

The name of this league would end up being the XFL, which actually stands for “Xtreme Football League.” This particular name pulled in a lot of attention from American football enthusiasts across the country.

It seemed as though the XFL was going to bring back some of the violence that began to diminish from the NFL through certain rule changes involving player safety. Since people always have, and always will, love brutal violence in football, the hype was real.

Unfortunately the XFL turned out to be far more entertainment oriented than people had expected.

A lot of the action portrayed on the field was already predetermined and involved many of the gimmicks that wrestling fans had grown to love, but not football fans.

Ratings dropped very sharply for the XFL. Starting off at a whopping 9.5 on their first week broadcast on NBC, they quickly lost almost all viewers and by Week 7, those ratings were already at a lowly 1.6.

However, Vince McMahon has decided to take another crack at things. He announced on Jan. 25 that he would be bringing back the XFL once again in the year 2020.

The league will start off with eight teams to start, each with 40-man rosters.

The games are supposed to take about two hours, and the season will begin in January and include 10-game seasons.

Perhaps even more important to note here is that McMahon has promised that this time around there will be “no gimmicks.”

This is a seemingly tall task for a man who has accumulated most of his wealth solely off of gimmicks, but the statement is reassuring for American football fans who do not wish for the league to turn out like it did last time.

There is no doubt that the XFL is going to bring in a ton of attention from sports fans around the world, but the question is will it be able to retain this attention after Week 1?

We can only wait to find out!