RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Sports and Wrestling Pulse Wrestling's Top 100 of the Modern Era

74. Goldberg

Real Name - Bill Goldberg
Aliases - Bill Gold
Hometown - Tulsa, Oklahoma
Born - December 27, 1966
Titles Held - WCW United States (2 times); WCW World Heavyweight; WCW World Tag Team (with Bret Hart); WWE World Heavyweight
Other Accomplishments - Winner of Pro Wrestling Illustrated Most Inspirational Wrestler of the Year Award in 1998; Winner of Pro Wrestling Illustrated Rookie of the Year Award in 1998; Winner of 1998 WCW Match of the Year Award (Goldberg vs. Hollywood Hogan); Winner of 2000 WCW Match of the Year Award (Goldberg vs. Scott Steiner); Ranked #75 of the top 500 singles wrestlers of the PWI years by Pro Wrestling Illustrated; Ranked #2 in the PWI 500 in 1998; co-owns Extreme Power Muay Thai training camp in California; hosts Bullrun on Spike TV

It's hard to know what to say about Goldberg, really. He ran into people. A lot. It defeated most of them. Then he went away for a bit but still got richer. Then he came back for a bit and ran into more people. The running was not quite as well received. Then he went away again. One time he wore a blonde wig and we laughed at him, not with him. His first name is Bill. He was never as enjoyable as when being mocked by Jericho. Not Gillberg. Never Gillberg. Nor Shelton, which has nothing to do with anything but it well worth remembering at times like these.

Hell, let's just start at the beginning. In his younger days Goldberg played football, which was a convenient way of satisfying his addiction to running into people. He played for the University of Georgia, then for the Atlanta Falcons, then had to retire early due to an abdominal injury. This left him to strut the streets of Georgia and try to ascertain a way to run into people again so he could keep out of trouble. A chance and entirely asexual encounter with Sting and Lex Luger in a local gymnasium brought him to the WCW Power Plant, where he was, for lack of a better word, trained. Bill Gold debuted on the 24th June 1997 and defeated Buddy Landell. Bill Goldberg debuted on television on the 22nd September 1997 episode of Nitro, defeating Hugh Morrus. Thus began the fabled winning streak, which can be anywhere up to 175 consecutive victories depending on your source. Try to get an exact figure for it is pretty pointless anyway, since it was artifically inflated by WCW and can include any given number of house shows even when other developments on those same cards are ignored on TV. I went through the TV and PPV results for 1997-8 and got up to 82-0 for Goldberg but, really, who cares? The important point is that it got very, very over with the WCW fans, who turned him into the sole new superstar the promotion ever had. He was never at the same level of popularity as Steve Austin in 1998 but he was head and shoulders above everybody else. It's also worth pointing out here again that, despite similarities in ring attire, facial hair and chrome-domeness, Goldberg was not modelled after Austin in any way, shape or form. Hell, he had already debuted before the Stone Cold craze really kicked in. As Eric Bischoff has stated on numerous occasions, the inspiration for the Goldberg character was actually none other than Ken Shamrock. There was certainly a point in 1997 when Vince McMahon intended to make Shamrock into the lynchpin of the WWF rather than Austin, yet, as we all know by now, Vince is clueless when it comes to MMA and UFC was nowhere near popular enough a decade ago for the fans to give a shit either way. Bischoff, to his credit, helped mould the only MMA gimmick in North American pro-wrestling to really take off.

And take off he did. Soon came the elaborate ring entrance, replete with a police escort, backstage walking akin to any good 'big fight' hype, some truly intense entrance music, a simple-yet-effective chant for the fans and, of course, a big pyro display. Nobody did it better. Except one guy...




So he won the WCW United States Title from Raven on the 20th April 1998 episode of Nitro. It mattered little. He won the WCW World Heavyweight Title from Hollywood Hogan on the 6th July episode of Nitro. It was certainly one of the most memorable moments in the history of Nitro, or even of all WCW, yet it was also the peak of Goldberg's career. Up until this point he had been steadily and competently doing his routine, yet now he was outside of that safety zone and would have to contend with the self-serving ineptitude of the rest of WCW's booking policies. For one thing, they rushed into the Goldberg/Hogan match without any build-up whatsoever. The "money is in the chase" saying may be a cliche by now but it still holds a semblance of truth. After all, Austin didn't just randomly get a match with Shawn Michaels on Raw one week in a last-minute booking decision and go over for the belt. He had a solid two months of feuding with DX, which made the eventual title change all the more pleasing for the audience and would have had that effect even if Mike Tyson had not been involved. Also, they never put Goldberg/Hogan onto PPV. They were starting to lose their overwhelming edge on Raw and did what they could to win the ratings on that week. That much worked, yet the very next week Nitro got a 4.2 and Raw a 4.7. Bravo. It also meant that they made no money off of the match. Hell, they didn't even book a rematch on the next PPV. Instead Hogan went to faff about with Dennis Rodman at Bash at the Beach '98, leaving Goldberg in a nothing squash against Curt Hennig. And look at the rest of Goldberg's PPV encounters during his reign - he won a 9-man battle royal at Road Wild, he didn't have a match at Fall Brawl, he retained against Diamond Dallas Page at Halloween Havoc in a match that had to be screened for free the next night on Nitro as the over-long PPV had its feed cut by most cable companies, he didn't have a match at World War III and then he was pinned at Starrcade. By Kevin Nash. After being electrocuted. By Scott Hall. Yes, 1998 ended with the nWo still standing tall, since WCW had failed to have hugely popular babyface Goldberg bring them down just as they had failed to have hugely popular babyface Sting bring them down. Bravo, gentlemen.

After that, Goldberg had lost any momentum he had left. The WCW fans still cheered for him but the act had grown stale now that they had ended both the streak and the first title reign and the nWo feud. None of their half-hearted attempts at repeating his original impact proved successful. Goldberg wasn't versatile enough to be able to play a heel role, which negated the 'big surprise' of Bash at the Beach 2000... well, that and the involvement of Vince Russo and Jeff Jarrett. He lacked the necessarily charisma to be able to draw people into character-based storylines, such as when the nWo had Miss Elizabeth press a harrassment charge against him. He didn't have in-ring savvy to make mountains out of molehills like Sid or Luger - although, miraculously, he had a cracking bout with Scott Steiner at Fall Brawl 2000. By the time WCW bothered getting around to doing something useful with Bret Hart, such as building a tasty feud with Goldberg, it was too little too late... and not at all helped by Goldberg kicking Bret in the head, giving him a concussion and ending his career. Not to be outdone, Goldberg promptly beat the shit out of a car window and injured his arm. (Random bit of trivia - Goldberg had six defeats in WCW and three of them were to Bret Hart) Evidently WCW creative had by now emptied their shallow well of ideas and had nothing better to suggest than hoping lightning would strike twice. That meant giving him a second winning streak... and if he lost he'd get fired. Ironically, they did go through with that stipulation after he lost to Luger and Buff Bagwell on the 14th January 2001, only for WCW to fold before they could book his return.

This left wee Billy with a distinct lack of people to run into. You can imagine his angst. Fortunately, he had many large pay cheques from AOL Time-Warner and a practically guaranteed WWE offer to fall back on. I hope he used that money to hire some midgets to run into around the house. He did wrestle some dates in Japan in 2002, so that's more or less the same thing. By 2003 he did find himself in WWE, where he got to do all the things that made him famous - such as failing to match wits with The Rock in verbal confrontations, or selling for prolonged periods of time during matches so uber-heel Triple H could remain, um, uber. The sheer novelty aspect of seeing him competing against a brand new set of main event talents saved him from tanking completely, especially once WWE just let him get on with things in a way that was suited to his capabilities after the crowd emphatically rallied behind him at SummerSlam 2003. Still, it was only ever a one-year deal and things were never going to be the same. Unlike his early WCW run, where he did have something to prove and was treated like a phenom from almost the word go, his WWE stint was inspired by nothing more than money. They didn't care about him and he, now just a rather big fish in an ocean, was none too fond about them. In his own words - "I will never set foot in their ring again. My time in WWE showed me there's good and bad in wrestling. What was good for me was my time in WCW and what was bad was my time in WWE."

In truth, Goldberg's legacy should perhaps not be winning a shitload of squash matches to great heat in 1998. Perhaps he should be thought of as an unintentional pioneer. Sure, he didn't have that deep-rooted desire to do nothing but devote himself to wrestling. Sure, his early success gave him a skewed perspective of how valuable he supposedly was to the business. Yet he was the first major superstar to be able to enter wrestling of his own volition, never immerse himself so far he lost sight of real life, make himself a hefty sum of money without squandering it on bad choices, choose when and where he wanted to be booked rather than having to let himself be booked by all and sundry, and then walk away whilst healthy and happy and with numerous other options available to him. It's wrestling as a career option rather than a lifestyle choice. Isn't such a thing conducive to wellness?

Ah, hell with it, let's just see him run into some guy: