It’s warm inside San Antonio’s Alamodome an hour before kickoff for the XFL Championship Game on May 13 when a commotion draws fans out of their seats and towards the field.

The sparse crowd, which by game time will grow to a bordering-on-respectable 22,754, has their phones out, ready to record the moment.

They’ve spotted the XFL’s 6-foot-5-inch weapon against its main competition, rival spring league USFL, and its best shot at profitability — Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The world’s biggest movie star is waving and pointing into the stands as he walks toward the sideline with Dany Garcia, long-business partner and ex-wife, who first asked him, in the pandemic summer of 2020, whether he was interested in her “crazy idea” of buying and running the XFL.

“You don’t call Dwayne Johnson and say, ‘I have a decent idea,’” Garcia told Forbes. “It’s got to be big, important and meaningful for him.”

With fellow investors Disney and RedBird Capital Partners, Garcia and Johnson paid $23.5 million to take control of the bankrupt XFL through a joint venture holding company, Alpha Acquico.

The payment includes $8.5 million to settle previous XFL debt. The league wouldn’t disclose what percentages the individual stakeholders control.

Johnson, 51, who was a defensive lineman at the University of Miami before his professional wrestling career and Hollywood, considers it “a league of opportunity” for guys, like him, who played college ball but never made it to the NFL.

At Miami, Johnson lost his starting job to Warren Sapp — a future NFL Hall of Famer — but he thought his name might still be called in the 1995 NFL draft.

It wasn’t. “Football was my dream,” Johnson told Forbes. “The NFL was my thing. I was going to buy my parents their first house.”

Already, the NFL has signed 26 XFL players. “Football didn’t end on my terms,” Johnson said. “I wish I’d had the XFL when I was coming out.” “It completes that circle,” Garcia said.

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