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May 28, 2025

The WWF Themed Hotel & Casino That Never Was: Ambition, Design, and Legacy

Wrestling Meets Vegas: Late-1990s Ambitions

In the late 1990s, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) was at the peak of its popularity. The WWF’s “Attitude Era” saw sky-high TV ratings, sold-out arenas, and booming pay-per-view buys. Company chairman Vince McMahon, never shy about bold ventures, was looking to extend the WWF brand beyond the wrestling ring. Las Vegas, at the same time, was embracing ever-flashier themed resorts and entertainment complexes – from pirate ships to pyramids – in a bid to reinvent itself as a family-friendly, all-encompassing entertainment capital. Against this backdrop, it seemed almost natural that the over-the-top world of pro wrestling would try to stake its claim in Sin City.

One factor spurring the idea was competition with rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW). WCW had opened a wrestling-themed restaurant (the “Nitro Grill”) at the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas in 1999. McMahon, always keen to one-up his rivals, even mused about sending WWF wrestlers to “start a fight” at WCW’s restaurant and then lead crowds back to a WWF venue for more mayhem. In this climate – with wrestling’s mainstream popularity surging and Las Vegas hungry for new attractions – the WWF brass saw an opportunity. The vision was bold: a WWF-themed hotel and casino that would bring the spectacle of wrestling to the heart of Las Vegas, allowing fans to literally “live” the WWF experience 24/7.

Genesis of the WWF Hotel & Casino Project

The idea moved quickly from wild notion to concrete plan. In August 1998, the WWF’s parent company (Titan Sports, Inc.) won a bankruptcy auction to purchase the struggling Debbie Reynolds Hotel & Casino, a small 12-story, 193-room property just off the Strip at 305 Convention Center Drive. The purchase price was about $10 million, a bargain for 6 acres of Vegas property – “a hell of a deal,” according to Debbie Reynolds’ son Todd Fisher.

The WWF announced it would transform the site into a wrestling-themed entertainment resort, declaring the project a “logical expansion of the WWF brand” and “a new venue in which to entertain our fans… We are anxious to get the plans developed for renovation of the property and to inject some WWF attitude into Las Vegas.” McMahon vowed to promote the planned hotel through WWF’s global TV reach, hyping it as aggressively as his next pay-per-view event.

Initial plans called for a dramatic overhaul of the modest existing hotel. In fact, the WWF intended to demolish the old structure entirely and build a brand-new high-rise resort tower in its place. Early press releases spoke of a ~$100 million investment to realize the vision. By 1999, concept drawings depicted a gleaming 35-story tower – far taller than the old 12-story building – emblazoned with the massive letters “WWF” across its façade. The idea was to make the WWF Hotel & Casino an immersive shrine to sports-entertainment: not just a place to gamble and sleep, but a full-fledged “Wrestling Disneyland” for adult fans. As WWF CEO (and Vince’s wife & currently heading the US Department of Education) Linda McMahon put it, they wanted to provide their brand of entertainment on the right scale – essentially bringing the action and attitude of Monday Night RAW into a Las Vegas resort.

Behind the scenes, the McMahons assembled a team to explore and execute the project. They set up a local WWF Hotel and Casino Ventures office and even hired a small staff to keep the acquired property nominally operational during planning. (At first, the takeover was kept low-key – staff answered the phone as the “Debbie Reynolds Hotel” to avoid media leaks. A Las Vegas hotel manager, AJ Duco, was brought on as project manager after literally knocking on the door looking for a job. Duco recalls being hired on the spot in 1998 and being one of only five employees holding down the fort while Vince’s plans were drawn up.

WWF personnel began visiting the site frequently. McMahon himself would fly in monthly, commandeer the entire top floor for his entourage, and eagerly brief the local team on his grand plans – even sharing blueprints and concept details as they evolved. By late 1998, the project had a working title (the “WWF Hotel & Casino”), staff polo shirts with WWF logos, and an ambitious target to open (at least in some initial form) shortly after the New Year.

Designing the Ultimate WWF Experience

The WWF enlisted our firm(Steelman Partners) to bring the concept to life. As a leading Las Vegas hospitality design firm known for extraordinary resorts and casinos, Steelman Partners was the clear choice to craft the design. Steelman Partners had experience creating immersive themed environments, and they swung for the fences with the WWF project. The proposed design was unapologetically bold and epically grand – exactly what one might expect when professional wrestling meets Vegas. Concept art and a promotional CGI video (unveiled in 1999) showcased the imagined resort in detail. And wow, our 3D Visualization Studio has come a long way since that era.

The concept rendering of the proposed WWF Hotel & Casino tower was a 35-story design dominated by a colossal “WWF” logo on its façade, envisioned as an LED display broadcasting wrestling highlights to the Vegas skyline.

The hotel tower itself was designed as a striking modern slab emblazoned with the WWF’s logo from top to bottom. Early renderings showed a silvery, faceted high-rise with the blocky letters “WWF” stretching stories high – essentially turning the entire building into a giant billboard for wrestling. Plans called for these letters to double as high-tech video screens projecting footage of WWF matches, so that even from afar onlookers could see Stone Cold Steve Austin stomping a mudhole or The Rock delivering a People’s Elbow. Massive branding was the order of the day.

Inside, the resort was conceived as a kind of wrestling theme park for adults. The casino floor would of course offer slot machines and table games, but with a twist: everywhere you looked, there’d be WWF flavor sprinkled in. The concept video revealed a soaring grand entry hall lined with video walls playing wrestling montages. Giant screens hung above the gaming tables, so you could bet on blackjack under the glow of a WrestleMania replay. Themed establishments were planned throughout the property, such as a wrestling merchandise gift shop and a ticket booth for live events.

The dining options were straight out of McMahon’s flamboyant playbook – for example, a BBQ restaurant cheekily named “Vince’s Steakhouse” and a food court dubbed “Armageddon” (after one of WWF’s pay-per-views). Every detail screamed “sports entertainment”: even the parking garage entrance was envisioned with an overhead marquee of the spiky Attitude-era WWF logo greeting guests in neon.

Steelman Partners’ design aimed to blur the line between a conventional resort and a live-action show. The WWF Hotel would not only house static memorabilia (though certainly a Hall of Fame exhibit or wrestling museum was likely in mind), but also feature live entertainment integrated into the experience. In fact, a host of outrageous ideas were floated to make the casino a nonstop wrestling carnival. According to WWF insiders, some proposed attractions included:

Live wrestling matches daily

in a dedicated arena on the premises (so guests might catch a bout any day of the week).

Retired wrestlers as greeters and dealers

lending their larger-than-life personalities to the hospitality side – imagine being checked into your room by Captain Lou Albano or having your blackjack dealt by Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart!

Wrestling-themed shops

such as an Undertaker-themed tattoo parlor (for getting some “ink” with a wrestling flair) or a Sable-themed lingerie store (playing off the edginess of WWF’s female star at the time)

Themed hotel rooms and suites after top stars

for example, luxury suites styled for The Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin. Each room would be an immersive homage, so fans could “stay with” their favorite wrestler in spirit.

Customized gaming

even the casino chips and slot machines would carry WWF iconography. One idea was collectible chips featuring the faces of stars like Stone Cold, The Undertaker, etc., turning poker night into a mini wrestling memorabilia show.

A 24-hour WWF spectacle

In short, the resort would be a 24-hour WWF spectacle, where one might encounter a choreographed brawl breaking out by the roulette wheel or stumble upon a late-night autograph signing in the lobby. McMahon’s team even produced a slick three-minute video simulation to promote the concept. It opens with sweeping shots of the gleaming new tower, giant WWF logos flickering, and then takes viewers through a virtual walkthrough of the interior – complete with crowds of fans, flashing lights, and quick cuts of in-ring action. The WWF’s classic branding was everywhere, including a hybrid logo blending the ’80s block lettering with the newer “scratch” logo, as if heralding a new era for the company in neon and concrete. The message was clear: this wouldn’t be just a place to stay, but a full “sports-entertainment resort”, unlike anything Las Vegas had ever seen.

Steelman Partners’ architectural vision received a fair amount of publicity among wrestling fans and Vegas watchers. The concept art was circulated for marketing purposes (a promotional brochure was created, which some Vegas locals still treasure as a “what-if” piece of nostalgia. In wrestling media, WWF performers even hyped the project – for instance, Road Dogg Jesse James sported a T-shirt advertising the “WWF Hotel & Casino” as part of his shtick in 1999. The slogan emblazoned on promotional materials captured the risk-embracing attitude of both wrestling and gambling: “’Cause life is one big crapshoot.” In many ways, the WWF Hotel’s design was ahead of its time – envisioning a form of immersive branding that foreshadowed modern Las Vegas tie-ins (like eSports arenas and experiential venues), albeit pushed to cartoonish extremes. Had it been built, it might have rivaled the likes of New York-New York or the Hard Rock Hotel as one of the Strip’s most talked-about themed destinations.

Aftermath and Lasting Influence

Though the WWF Hotel & Casino never materialized, its story left behind an intriguing legacy. In the immediate aftermath, the McMahons pivoted their strategy for brick-and-mortar ventures. Instead of a Las Vegas resort, WWF invested in: WWF New York, a themed restaurant and nightspot in Times Square. That venue opened in late 1999 and was heavily featured on WWF television throughout 2000 (fans will recall shots of WWF New York during broadcasts of RAW and SmackDown!).

For Steelman Partners, the WWF project became one of Las Vegas’s famous “lost resorts” – an ambitious design that ended up on the shelf alongside other never-built concepts like the Titanic-themed casino and the mobster-themed hotel. WWF renderings circulated among Vegas enthusiasts and are still remembered. Indeed, the planned WWF Casino has earned a place in lists of epic unbuilt Vegas projects. It’s fun to imagine what might have been: a 90s time capsule of Attitude Era preserved in steel and neon on the Vegas skyline. The concept even spawned memorabilia of its own. A few rare promotional items, like a commemorative t-shirt with the hotel’s logo and “Life is One Big Crapshoot” slogan, occasionally pop up on online auctions – quirky collector’s items from a casino that never opened.

In Las Vegas, the physical site went through its own evolution. After WWF Entertainment sold the property, it was operated under various names (the Greek Isles, then the Clarion) as a budget hotel for another decade. Ultimately, the old building was imploded in 2015, clearing the land for future development. In other words, nothing of the WWF’s brief tenure in Vegas remains on the ground – it’s truly a footnote in the city’s layered history.

In interviews years later, Linda McMahon would cite the WWF Hotel fiasco as a valuable learning experience. Speaking as the U.S. Small Business Administration head in 2017, she said the casino project taught her about the importance of focusing on one’s core competencies and the perils of jumping into an unfamiliar industry. “Do what you know,” she advised entrepreneurs, chuckling at how the wrestling moguls once thought they could run a Vegas casino. It’s a candid acknowledgment that even a wildly successful brand can get in over its head.

In the annals of Las Vegas, the wrestling hotel remains a legendary unicorn – often cited in nostalgia blogs and forum discussions as “the casino that stayed kayfabe.” And in the architectural world, it stands as a reminder that not every spectacular design and unforgettable concept transpire into reality. The WWF Hotel was conceived at the crossroads of two entertainment powerhouses, but in the end, what happened in Vegas… stayed in Vegas, as a colorful chapter in both wrestling and Las Vegas history.