NFL Europa but holding regular season games outside the US in Mexico City, London and Toronto. College Football is popular with stars such as Tim Tebow, Matt Leinart, Vince Young, Reggie Bush and Darren McFadden. American Football's biggest flop of the decade was Vince McMahon's XFL which was born and die in 2001. The Boston Red Sox break the 86 year "Curse of the Bambino" by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series (they also won in 2007). The following year the Chicago White Sox beat the Houston Astros to win the 2005 World Series, winning their first since 1917. Horse racing in the United States enjoys a surge in ratings, thanks to three straight years of Triple Crown hopefuls (War Emblem, Funny Cide and Smarty Jones in 2002, 2003 and 2004). However, all three horses fail to win the Triple Crown, and the next hopeful (Barbaro in 2006) is severely injured during the Preakness. Beach volleyball becomes an increasingly popular sport worldwide, establishing its first generation of superstars and branching out into large inland cities. Football begins to gain popularity amongst North Americans and Australians, fuelled by World Cup successes for the USA in 2002 and Australia in 2006. Previously, North America and Australia had been considered the only continents to not have pertinent followers of World Football. A basketball game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons is called almost 50 seconds early due to a massive fan-player brawl, an event which became known as Pacers–Pistons brawl. Many British football clubs are being bought by Eastern European millionaires such as Chelsea by Roman Abramovich, Hearts by Vladimir Romanov and Portsmouth F.C. by Milan Mandarić and Alexandre Gaydamak. The IRB Rugby World Cup increases in size and audience to become the third most watched sporting event in the world after the FIFA World Cup and The Summer Olympics respectively. WADA, The World Anti-doping Agency, introduces a standardised anti-doping code for all sports. P.R. China's sportsmen make continuous improvements in several sports, in preparation for the Beijing (北京) Olympic Games. Professional wrestling, which had separate golden ages in the 1980s and 1990s, begins to decline in popularity in North America. Many attribute this decline to the monopoly on the industry held by World Wrestling Entertainment after the collapse of both World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling in 2001, with WWE acquiring the remains of both companies.