Father Time is undefeated.
When former WCW and WWE champion, Bill Goldberg made his return to WWE programming last month to confront Gunther to set up his retirement match in his hometown of Atlanta, I penned an article about the numerous reasons that it probably won’t a wise decision for the 58-year-old former Atlanta Falcon from his NFL days before he found wrestling stardom, to lace up the boots one more time.
It didn’t have quite the same wholesome presentation, with Bill Goldberg’s friends and family surrounding him the way that the conclusion of the Saturday Night’s Main Event broadcast did, but his 2016 comeback was more much logical and successful.
Nobody would’ve guessed it when fences were mended from more than a decade earlier of a disastrous run that soured Goldberg on the WWE experience, but management was able to catch lightening in a bottle for the second time in his career. Bill Goldberg returned to the WWE to promote his association with that year’s 2K video game, with the notion that his title match against Brock Lensar at Survivor Series was a one-off to promote video game sales, particularly because of how lucrative that revenue stream continues to be for the organization even today.
The fans knew that Goldberg was put in a no-win situation when he inked a one-year deal in 2003. The guy that was booked to smash everyone in a short amount of time and rightfully catered to in an effort to maximize his drawing power while minimizing his weaknesses in WCW wasn’t suddenly going to be able to carry a 20-minute main event on pay-per-view in the WWE. Considering we saw Vince McMahon still fighting the Monday night wars in 2015 when Triple H just had to beat Sting at Wrestlemania, it’s not surprising that Goldberg wasn’t given much help under the WWE banner in 2003.
Ironically, the negative experience that repelled Bill Goldberg from even considering another WWE run for several years is what prompted the demand for his comeback stint when it was announced that he was a part of the 2K series. The fans wanted the WCW legend to get a chance to conclude his career in a more deserving fashion, as he legitimately was one of the biggest stars in the industry at a time when the pro wrestling business peaked in popularity. The fan response was so overwhelming that management took the chance and gave him a shocking victory over Lesnar for the championship, one of the very few legitimately surprising moments of the modern era.
After almost a six-month run, Goldberg dropped the title back to Lesnar, but tickets and merchandise were sold because there was still fuel in the engine to draw money with Bill Goldberg as a main event talent, albeit as tailored as those main event matches had to be for him.
It’s well-documented and I already discussed in the previous article about the reasons why nothing after that 2017 run was truly impactful or served a purpose. Sure, if he wanted to take a seven-figure payoff to work for the Saudis, everyone can conveniently forget about it, as they did with Shawn Micheals’ return match, but anything after that was an attempt to try to reignite something that had to organically fall in place to work to begin with when he returned. The circumstances for a successful Goldberg comeback were right in 2016, it’s not something that can be scripted or resuscitated any time the office wants to try to add a short term boost to an event or storyline.
Saturday Night’s Main Event this past weekend was no exception.
I understand that Goldberg thought, based on interviews within the past few years, that he was going to be given a chance for an official retirement after he finished up with his tenure during the pandemic era, a time frame within sports entertainment that was so unprecedented and uncharted that the office tried any strategy they could to continue to produce content to be able to satisfy the massive TV deals the company signed the year previously. Of course, it wasn’t something that could’ve been properly planned or promoted at the time because limited capacity was an initial goal, but understandably, nobody knew when jam-packed arenas or stadiums would be a regular part of the industry again.
That being said, I’m not sure three years after Goldberg had his last match, when he’s officially a senior citizen, was the right decision to put him back in the ring.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not insulting the former WCW champion, it’s quite the opposite. I sincerely think that he deserved better than his body could give him, despite his legitimate efforts. I’m sure he was happy to get the chance to be surrounded by his friends and family, but Saturday Night’s Main Event didn’t honor his legacy. Granted, it didn’t tarnish any of his accomplishments either, but it wasn’t needed and could’ve put him at risk for a more serious injury.
Bill Goldberg looked like he was hobbled a few weeks ago when he originally confronted Gunther, and I was equally as concerned when I saw him walk with a noticeable limp after WCW head of security, Doug Dillinger knocked on his locker room door for his final bout. Goldberg didn’t look like he could move well at all as he made his way through the hallways and toward the ring, which is something that necessitated that Gunther more or less work around him while the aging legend stayed stationary for the majority of the match. The concern I had wasn’t about him ruining his legacy with a subpar retirement match, his accomplishments in his prime far surpass that, but rather that less than an hour earlier, we saw Seth Rollins, one of the most athletic performers in the industry today, suffer a serious knee injury so it wasn’t unrealistic to think that Goldberg could get hurt as well, specifically when he clearly had a compromised knee going to the ring.
Speaking of the Seth Rollins injury, according to The Wrestling Observer’s Bryan Alvarez, the last 40 minutes of the broadcast had to be changed on the fly, and it makes you wonder if Rollins was originally supposed to play a role in the finish of the main event. I said before, and discussed it on the “Histories, Mysteries, & Victories” podcast with my pal, Declan Finnegan that maybe Goldberg was going to get the sentimental hometown win to retire on a nice note before Rollins cashes-in the MITB contract to win the championship. It would be a way for Goldberg not to lose in his final match in his hometown, it would protect Gunther because he would’ve lost the title on a technicality, and it further solidifies the new Heyman faction with Rollins as the world heavyweight champion.
If any of that was the plan in any way, shape, or form, management would’ve had to call an audible. I could be wrong, but I just can’t believe that the original concept for Saturday Night’s Main Event was that the hometown guy gets choked out to lose in his final match. It’s something Vince McMahon would’ve gleefully booked, but I don’t think it’s the first option in the Nick Khan era of the company.
Furthermore, and perhaps this was a bigger problem than the finish, since the LA Knight/Rollins’ bout had to end so abruptly after Rollins got hurt, it seemed like the main event had to be given more time than originally planned. The Goldberg/Gunter match went just over 15 minutes, and I don’t think any of his prior matches at any point during his comeback went anywhere close to that long for a bell-to-bell segment.
Bill Goldberg is a 58-year-old former pro wrestler with a noticeable level of wear and tear on his body from a career in sports, and at Saturday Night’s Main event, Bill Goldberg looked like a 58-year-old guy with noticeable wear and tear on his body from a career in sports. He put fourth an admirable effort, but father time is undefeated. The lesson that should be taken from this, at least in my view, is that in an era when we’ve seen more guys wrestle to an older age, partially because of the advancements in the medical field, it’s not always the best decision. Sure, every old-timer, at least in a prior generation that they thought had enough left in the tank for one more match, one more run, or one more big payoff, but more often than not, the risks aren’t worth it.
Ric Flair took two heart attacks and was unconscious in his last match, Sabu couldn’t move well in his final match, and Goldberg looked his age in his retirement bout so at the very least, some caution should be used going forward because the trend of retirement matches for aging legends hasn’t yielded the best results.
What do you think? Share your thoughts, opinions, feedback, and anything else that was raised on Twitter @PWMania and Facebook.com/PWMania.
Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
Email [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, & Threads @jimlamotta89
