Dany Garcia, The Rock’s ex-wife and new co-owner of the XFL, did an interview with Yahoo.com. Here are the highlights.
How much she loves football: “I love football. Deeply. I actually love sports, and I’m a professional bodybuilder, so sports and storytelling has been a part of my life. The second iteration of the XFL I was not only so enthusiastic, I was dying to be part of it.”
How she wanted to be a part of the second iteration of the XFL: “I was dying to have some ownership, but Vince [McMahon] had it completely under control and so I participated as a fan that opening weekend and following it for the five weeks. I was so engaged with the product that they had put together … but it was the community that was surrounding these teams and the engagement in that community and the fact that they could connect with these athletes. A lot of times in professional sports, professional leagues, there’s a huge gap between an athlete and your fan. They’re untouchable … The XFL knew how to close that, and when you begin to close that you create these magic moments where these moments matter, the games mattered, the plays mattered, and the athletes’ wins and losses, they impacted their lives.”
Having a working relationship with her ex-husband: “It’s very rare. I understand [it’s rare]. First of all, we have the support of our spouses. Mrs. [Lauren] Hashian Johnson, Dwayne’s wife, is amazing. My husband is amazing, Dave Rienzi, and Dave and Dwayne are so close. My husband is Dwayne’s strength and conditioning coach. That physique that is on DJ, it was all designed by my husband. So we all are close and we respect each other. There’s an incredible amount of respect.”
How they work together now: “We worked very, very hard at it. If you’re going to really invest in someone and you happen to divorce them, you need to work very hard, and you have to be very accountable to yoursel. There was a lot of accountability as far as who we were in the marriage and what did and didn’t work and we did our work. But what we create together is so amazing and rewarding and fantastic and we’ve sincerely invested in each other’s growth personally and professionally. We’ve put in the time, we knew the vision, and we’re friends. We were friends before and we’ve been friends after. We never lost that level of respect.”
When the XFL might return: “What we do have in our back pocket is scenarios where we do go in 2021 and 2022. We have eight teams so we do have the ability to ‘bubble.’ We’re really looking at that. I think the audience is getting used to not having fans, fan sounds, as odd as it is, it seems to be working, obviously if that bodes well I think there’s a case for 2021 but we’re going to be figuring that out. It’s about the safety of the players, really making sure we can have the players safe and have a level of play that is still high quality. I would love to see it happen in 2021 but we are taking our time.”
