The Georgia Dome in Atlanta which hosted WrestleMania 27 in 2011 is no more as it was imploded today to make way for the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium right next door.
Opened in 1992 with a seating capacity of 80,000, the Georgia Dome was the home of NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and hosted the Super Bowl XXVIII in 1994 and Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000. When WWE hosted WrestleMania, the Georgia Dome packed in 71,617 WWE fans, second only to a Rolling Stones concert in 1994 which saw 81,160 fans. At WrestleMania 27, The Rock returned as the host of the show after a 7-year absence.
The Georgia Dome was also the site where Goldberg defeated Hulk Hogan for his first WCW title on July 6, 1998. Over 40,000 took over one side of the Georgia Dome for this special edition of WCW Monday Nitro, with Eric Bischoff putting on this PPV-caliber match on free television to battle WWE’s resurgence in the Monday night war rating. That Nitro ended up beating Raw 4.8 to 4.0 while the Hogan/Goldberg match from the stadium drew 6.91 rating for the quarter hour, which was a record at the time.
The new Mercedes-Benz Stadium is surely a good fit for a future WrestleMania as it holds over 70,000 fans in a football setting. The NFL already announced that Super Bowl LIII in 2019 will be held there and that often means that WrestleMania will not be far behind.
Atlanta's Georgia Dome is destroyed in a scheduled implosion with 4,300 pounds of TNT, after 25 years of hosting historic sporting events https://t.co/7lZLI5THt4 pic.twitter.com/Y2papvES4s
— CNN (@CNN) November 20, 2017
