Between 1997 and 2001, Bill Goldberg secured 173 consecutive victories in WCW, proving himself to be the most dominant athlete in the pro wrestling industry after which he joined All Japan Pro Wrestling and then finally WWE in 2003. Goldberg’s debut and his feud with The Rock was very well received by the WWE fan base and he even had a successful World Heavyweight Championship run after defeating ‘The Game’, Triple H at Unforgiven.
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In the one year run that Goldberg had in the WWE, he fought Jericho and Triple H with Evolution among others, but his final feud before leaving the company was with the Beast, Brock Lesnar. Although their WrestleMania XX match was quite eventful, the audience never gave them a chance since they knew both Superstars were leaving WWE. Vince even appointed Stone Cold Steve Austin to appear as the guest referee for the match but the audience still did not care.
Many opinions exist about Goldberg among wrestling fans ranging from die-hard old school WCW fans who think he is a force of nature, all the way to modern day fans who think he belongs in bar room brawls and not the ring. WWE veteran Bret Hart recently spoke about Seth Rollins’ tendency to injure his opponents in the ring mentioning that Goldberg and others in that era used to wrestle recklessly without paying notice to the safety of their coworkers. Apart from being an unsafe worker Goldberg has injured many fellow Superstars, one of the most notable among them being Bret Hart. Goldberg’s wrestling style is completely the opposite of what WWE is trying to promote to the PG era fans and he is just very hard to work with, something that not many Superstars these days will want to deal with, let alone Brock Lesnar.
There was a moment in last month’s SummerSlam where everyone expected him to come running out after the Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton main event but sadly the audiences cheers went unanswered as it was Shane McMahon who came out and took an F5 from ‘The Beast’. The rumors haven’t died down since then and it is possible that we might see a special appearance from the former Superstar in the coming months but a full-time return to the WWE ring for Goldberg seems very unlikely, at least at this point.
