10 Things You Didn't Know About WCW's Nitro Grill Restaurant
"Where The Big Boys Eat!"
By early-1999, the once-mighty World Championship Wrestling was starting to lose some steam.
That's the popular narrative today (pushed by WWE during their revisionist 'Monday Night Wars' series on the Network), but it's not strictly true. As calendars turned to '99, WCW was still hot property, and there were still internal hopes that the company would someday turn things around and become number one again.
Nobody could've imagined that it'd only be two short years before Vince McMahon purchased the remnants of his competition, that's for sure. WCW were still riding high, pulling in solid ratings, selling merchandise by the truckload and opening themed restaurants in Las Vegas.
Yep, the Nitro Grill opened for business in May that year, but the promotion had started to hype the thing by January, and they'd been planning it for a while before that. Located inside the popular Excalibur Hotel & Casino resort, WCW's new eatery was going to be the next evolutionary step in Nitro-led dominance.
The place had so much to offer both casual and hardcore wrestling fans alike. There was a gift shop for those who fancied a little post-meal shopping, and WCW went above and beyond mere licensing...