February 27, 2003

IT'S THE END OF 'THE

IT'S THE END OF 'THE WORLD': In a story that, for the first time ever, has led Gawker to link to 411wrestling.com, World Wrestling Entertainment has decided to close its Times Square restaurant/nightclub, The World. The club, while indicative of the wrestling group's rise in demographic status in the late '90s, managed to lose $18 million in less than three years of operation.
I went to The World (previously known as "WWF New York") a few times, and always enjoyed both the food and the atmosphere- sort of a wrestling fan's theme park during the week, while on weekends The World became a vibrant nightclub with next to no references to wrestling at all. During my one visit to the nightclub incarnation in the summer of 2001, I ran into the legendary Howard Stern character Hank the Drunken Angry Dwarf, mere weeks before his death.
The closing is indicative of the falling popularity of wrestling, and shows once again that WWF/E has been utterly incapable of any type of successful business endeavors outside of wrestling (see also, "No Holds Barred," the World Bodybuilding Federation, the XFL, etc.). And it also tells us something about the decline of Disneyfied Times Square, which in recent months has also seen the shuttering of the 42nd St. HMV record store, the food court next to the AMC Empire cinema, and numerous other businesses. It's only a matter of time before the hookers and peepshows return...

Posted by Stephen Silver at February 27, 2003 01:29 AM
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