Your gaze meets the bronze lion guarding the entrance to the hotel that, when it opened in December 1993, was the largest in the world. The bronze lion at the entrance weighs 45 tons and stands 45 feet tall. Kirk Kerkorian, the Armenian-American billionaire who built and sold the original MGM Grand in Reno, named his Las Vegas flagship after the Hollywood studio he owned and loved the imagery of.
Frank Sinatra performed at the original MGM Grand in Reno and maintained a complicated relationship with Las Vegas throughout his career. Sinatra's power in Las Vegas was essentially sovereign during the Rat Pack years — hotel owners gave him ownership stakes to secure his appearances, and his presence guaranteed sold-out runs. The modern MGM Grand carries that entertainment legacy forward as one of the premier boxing venues in America. The fights of Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, and Floyd Mayweather have all taken place within these walls.
The original entrance featured a walkway through the lion's mouth, which was removed after guests from Asian countries — where walking into a lion's mouth is considered bad luck — refused to use it. In Las Vegas, even the architecture must accommodate superstition. The casino business runs on belief in luck, and offending your customers' cosmology is bad for the bottom line.