Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
We have often talked glowingly of older arenas and venues that no longer exist in the world of professional wrestling. With that said, what about an office building? Not just an office building, but THE ultimate office building that has been the site of pay per views, segments for Raw and Smackdown, even a Super Bowl commercial. The building I speak of, was known for years simply as ‘Titan Towers.’ Of course, nowadays it has been renamed as WWE Global Headquarters.
Before the existence of Titan Towers, Vince McMahon conducted business for the World Wrestling Federation in places like Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Owings Mills, Maryland and Greenwich, Connecticut…before ultimately choosing Stamford, Connecticut to be the home headquarters to the WWF. At first, McMahon rented a small office in the Stamford area, but with his company growing rapidly, McMahon needed a much bigger office space. According to Bruce Prichard, Vince’s first choice was to purchase the IBM complex which had several small buildings in one area. It was perfect for Vince to transform the buildings into offices, TV studio and gymnasium.
Before his purchase of the IBM complex in Stamford, Vince stumbled on an eight story office building a few blocks away from IBM. McMahon fell in love with the space and decided that instead of having everything in separate facilities, he would house everything in the same building. In April of 1990, McMahon bought the new office building located at 1241 East Main Street in Stamford. The building would open a little over a year later in May of 1991. It was affectionately known as ‘Titan Towers.’ A rather odd name for a single building that only had eight floors, but meaningful as it was named after the WWF’s parent company Titan Sports.
Titan Towers was complete with offices, fully equipped gym, gaming room, cafeteria, TV studio and warehouse. Everything conveniently located in one place. The 94,000 plus square foot space could hold up to 300 employees. While the building housed Vince McMahon the executive and saw many of the biggest names in the wrestling business come through its doors…it also played an integral part of WWE’s growth as a company.
In the early days of Monday Night Raw, the rooftop of Titan Towers were used to film the opening video for the show with stars like Shawn Michaels, the Undertaker, Yokozuna and Razor Ramon all fighting one another. It also housed the short lived, but groundbreaking call in show called Livewire in the days leading up to the Attitude Era.
At the height of the company’s popularity in the 1990’s, WWE filmed a Super Bowl ad inside the confines of Titan Towers. The commercial cost 1.6 million dollars to air and was seen by millions upon millions the day of the game. Other commercials aired within Titan, including spots for ICOPro supplements. Those ads were filmed inside Titan Towers gym.
In 1999, Vince McMahon opened Titan Towers doors to allow filmmaker Barry Blaustein to film segments for his documentary called ‘Beyond the Mat.’ We were taken inside Vince McMahon’s office where he met Darren Drozdov for the first time.
There have been multiple segments filmed at Titan for episodes of Raw and Smackdown that involved, Stone Cold Steve Austin, DX and Brock Lesnar.
In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic…the building hosted the Money in the Bank pay per view. Without a fanbase in attendance, various WWE superstars battled all throughout Titan Towers to reach the rooftop and grab the MITB briefcase.
Just like when Vince and company moved into Titan Towers in 1991, with the WWE’s continued growth and global reach…a brand new, much larger facility was needed. The once mighty Titan Towers is now empty and for up for sale. While no price was issued for the property…it was estimated to be worth over 18 million dollars back in 2019. It’ll be interesting to see who ends up purchasing the building and if they keep the structure up or bulldoze it and start anew. Whatever is the case, as a WWF/WWE fan…there were certainly many great memories associated with the old Titan Towers.
