A Comprehensive List of Things Goldberg Leaves out of his Resume
So, Goldberg, ever since the start of his phenomenal career has been heavily criticized as a one-trick pony. But when that one trick is destroying and killing everyone in a mad dash of rage, it’s pretty freakin’ awesome. Goldberg is a legend of the business, quite literally. He has the longest unbeaten streak in professional wrestling, he looks like a man carved out of a mountain, his biceps eclipse the sun on good days and once he reportedly speared a building to death. Some of those things might not be true. What is, however, true are the following 7 times that Goldberg’s reputation was tarnished and dragged through the dirt.
1. Real Life Fight with Chris Jericho
So Chris Jericho is a phenomenal wrestler, right? He has undying charisma, exceptional in-ring skills. However, what is little known is that Chris Jericho is a real-life bad-ass who can headlock a bull into submission.
Jericho was a Cruiserweight back in WCW and was the Television Champion for a long, long time. His shtick for a while was that he used to come out to the ring and call out Bill Goldberg for a match. Goldberg, however, did not respond. He deemed Chris Jericho a “vanilla midget” and the prospective plans for Jericho v Goldberg were that Jericho would get squashed in a series of 30-second matches over the course of 3 Pay-Per-Views. Angered by this, Jericho left WCW and went to blaze a Hall of Fame worthy career in WWE.
Then in 2003, Mr. Bill came to WWE and tensions between the two parties were never higher. Jericho had been made aware that Goldberg had been talking behind his back, this led to Jericho confronting Goldberg and a fight quickly ensued. You would expect that the 280 pound Goldberg would decimate the barely 220 pound Jericho, but Jericho put Goldberg in a headlock and almost knocked him out.
This is what Goldberg looks like, and that’s Chris Jericho. How even?
2. Ending the Hitman’s Career
Although Goldberg was a massive deal in WCW and had consistently been the biggest draw for the company for the longest time. He had never been known to be a great in-ring worker, in fact, he wasn’t even considered a good in-ring worker. He was at time sloppy and borderline dangerous.
All of that was proved to audiences all around the world when millions of people watched Goldberg botch a Mule Kick to Bret Hart and cause his neck to snap.
This would eventually be the moment that ended the career of one of the best, if not the best in-ring performer, Bret “The Hitman” Hart. While Bret Hart was the personification of technical proficiency, Goldberg was on the other end of the spectrum. 15:36 is when the kick landed.
https://youtu.be/6uDrWVSMjNM?t=15m36s
3. William Regal Embarrasses the Rookie Goldberg
You do not ever mess with an Englishman who brawled bare knuckle on the streets of Blackpool and is known to be an absolute genius when it comes to technical wrestling. That man is William Regal. Someone with a legitimate fighting background and exceptional technical wrestling skills, Regal was a respected veteran who could do no wrong.
Bill Goldberg was the upcoming hot-shot and had driven the professional wrestling world to a frenzy. He had been known for two things. Being less than stellar on the mic and his matches lasting an average of 2 minutes. Mainly because he wasn’t yet ready for an actual competitive wrestling match. He was still green in the ring and had a long way to go.
So what do you do when you’re in a position like that? You do not put them in the same match. Simple right? Not for WCW bookers. They thought it might be fun to put the crafty veteran with the sloppy upstart. The results were awkward at best.
Regal taught young Bill a lesson in pro-wrestling and completely made him look like an idiot in the ring. Goldberg, who had never been in a competitive match, had no idea what to do when Regal came at him with elaborate wrestling holds and chain wrestling moves. Have a look yourselves.
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4. The Streak is a Lie
Wait what? You best get a glass of water or something because this will actually shock you. The 173-0 attributed to Goldberg is a heavily made up number and a number of those matches have been a lie. Although it is true that Goldberg has never been pinned clean, meaning, he has never lost a single match clean.
Long time fans of WCW noticed discrepancies between the number of matches Goldberg was supposed to have wrestled and the ones that he actually did! Goldberg’s desire to win every single match resulted in WCW feeding the audience with some unrealistic numbers.
It has been speculated for a long time that the numbers have been racked up even through untelevised house shows. But factoring in even those matches, do not sum up to 173-0.
Journalists have claimed the actual number is 155-0. Although pretty impressive, we wrestling fans value truth in numbers over anything.
5. Goldberg Hated the WWE
When Goldberg left the WWE following only a year in the company. There were shots fired from the Bill Goldberg camp. He called out WWE on their mistreatment of great talent, a less than friendly work environment and disputes over pay.
It was clear that he left with a sour taste in his mouth and even vowed of never coming back to work for the WWE.
Not only has he been critical of professional wrestling itself, he’s often felt that in WWE there were forces working against him to keep him down. Goldberg later found work commentating for MMA promotions and heavily laid the fire down on WWE.
It was a mild summer day when the trailer for WWE 2k17 dropped and the wrestling world exploded when they saw Bill Goldberg make an appearance. This sent waves and waves of rumors and speculation about him returning to the company.
He showed up on Monday Night Raw to accept Brock Lesnar’s challenge. Everybody soon forgot how much he hated the WWE. Perhaps he somehow found his love for wrestling again (read: Goldberg loves money).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgnQXlNERT0
6. He is About to Go After the WWE Championship
The WWE Championship is still regarded as the Holy Grail of Pro-wrestling. The title that every aspirant hopes to win one day. So it is with careful planning that the powers that be at WWE decide who will carry the company’s sigil next. So it comes as a surprise when good ol’ Bill bellows his claim for the Title on an episode of Raw.
Although this move has already riled up fans, old and new alike, this raises a lot of questions. Isn’t he the one who crapped all over the promotion and only came back because of money? Isn’t he still not capable of having matches that last more than 6 minutes? Yes and yes.
Which is why this moves reeks of money more than it does of intelligent booking.
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7. Goldberg Does Not Like to Miss the Spear
Oh, good ol Bill and his massive prickly ways. Goldberg had a bit of an “attitude problem”, the same way that the Titanic had a bit of an “iceberg problem”. He continued to squash opponents left and right and even went so far as to telling management and the other wrestlers that he will never miss a spear.
The Spear is Bill Goldberg’s signature where he drives his massive shoulder into the opponent, transporting the other gentlemen into a different dimension where everything is made out of Bill Goldberg’s nasty facial expressions.
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In a match against DDP, the hottest face in the company then. He outright turned down DDP when he asked him to miss the spear, in order to create more drama in the match. DDP was right, it did. Goldberg went for the spear, and DDP side-stepped just in time for him to miss out. Goldberg ran head first into the post and almost knocked himself out.
This resulted in the best match that Goldberg ever had, never mind the fact Goldberg almost killed himself trying to kill another man.
