Sports Entertainment

TheNozz said:

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It's really egregious how Goldberg wasn't even looking as he threw the kick. Just a wild kick out into space, "he'll know what to do"

As a Goldberg fan, I really wish we'd gotten Goldberg vs Warrior in WCW. Preferably in 1998 when it would have been huge and really mattered (but Hogan had to get his win back on Warrior instead, I guess).

I don't think most modern fans realize what a huge fucking deal Warrior was. If Austin and Rock were 1a and 1b of the Attitude Era, Warrior was the 1b to Hogan's 1a in the Golden Era. Could he wrestle well? Not really. Was he limited? Yeah, of course. Warrior was huge though, in both fan interest and in-canon power level.

I totally believe that the New Generation failed largely because the Golden Era main eventers completely failed to pass the torch or put anyone over. That means Hogan and Warrior. Guys like Bret and Diesel and HBK had to claw their way up with very little assistance; the only Golden Era WWF main eventer to help them at all was the #3 guy, Macho Man. Even then, Vince barely let Macho put anyone over (Macho wanted to work with Bret, Shawn, etc and make stars out of them, and Vince instead wanted him on commentary).

So getting Warrior in the late 90's was a huge coup for WCW. It would have been huge for WWF pre-Attitude as well, like "look, we have the guy who beat Hogan" while Hogan was the face of the other channel. However Warrior wasn't reliable enough for WWF to get much out of him in 1996.

WCW on the other hand had Warrior on board and very game to work with the new gen there, and they proceeded to...give him very little to do. I think he had 3 matches altogether and it was all in service of putting over Hogan at the end.

Once Russo came in, he wanted to run Warrior vs Goldberg as a big well-built main event torch-passing, as Warrior had never passed the torch to anyone really (his 3 major losses ever were all via extensive cheating, so really, he was still the tied-with-prime-Hogan top guy of the boom era). Goldverg vs Warrior was "unstoppable force versus immovable object" and both guys still had the physique and athleticism to do something entertaining with the right agents guiding it.

Not sure how big the match would have been in 2000 (which is when it would have actually happened, given that the 1998 run had Warrior tied up already with Hogan). Warrior was diminished a bit by the Hogan match in 98 and Goldberg was diminished a bit by the overall state of WCW and his increasingly-contrived inability to get the world title back. (Then mid-2000 the heel turn kinda finished him off, but yeah)

If they had brought back Warrior in 2000, it's too bad WCW couldn't play WM12 footage of Warrior kicking out of the Pedigree on loop, considering HHH was the WWF champion for most of 2000. That would have been hilarious. The internet wasn't the way it is now, so fans wouldn't have really been able to meme it either.

Pretty sure HHH wanted to face Warrior at Wrestlemania 31 and get his win back, and that's why they brought Warrior back into the fold in the year before that. However Warrior died and any tentative plan HHH had for a match was out the window. So then they brought back Sting and HHH buried him at WM31 instead. Wheee.

Anyway, Goldberg/Warrior is a "dream match we never got" for me, along with Brock/Batista, Hogan/Austin, Goldberg/Austin. Most modern fans won't get it, but anyone who studied the 1990's era of wrestling will know why Warrior was not only a big deal, but also mattered hugely to elevating the next generation (which early 90's Vince completely failed at).

See also: Bret leaving WCW without ever really passing the torch to anyone (followed by his successor, Benoit, doing the same), which was the actual thing that put the nail in WCW's coffin, not the Arquette shit. They destroyed the title lineage by dropping the ball.

"Ah, but Bret was concussed, he had to leave, they had no other option but to vacate the title" ...yeah except he wrestled for a month after the Goldberg kick and had a bunch of matches. Him just losing a quick shock match against someone like Booker T would have done far more to elevate Booker than his eventual actual win over joke main eventer Jarrett did.

See also Punk leaving AEW without ever really putting anyone over. He was supposed to have a third match with MJF and solidly put him over and that didn't happen. He just beat everyone and left, and the title took about two years to recover after that. Very similar to what happened with Bret at the end of his WCW tenure actually.

This concludes "Story Time with Raj", just grousing about title lineages, torch-passings, and whatnot. I could do another whole page about how much the WWF Next Generation was kneecapped out of the gate by keeping them firmly separated from Hogan, Warrior, and to an extent Macho, but I think I conveyed the gist of it already.

...and WTF was with Bret and Diesel winning their first world titles on house shows, from guys who functioned as transitional champs rather than real torch-bearers? Well, at least they got the title at all, unlike Luger. Then the WWF wondered why none of the above were catching on as the "new Hulk" after Hogan left.

Gavinmad said:

I'm curious how exactly someone throws a mule-kick without looking away from the direction they're kicking. Everyone loves to throw Goldberg under the bus for being the one to end Hart's career but he wasn't the only one to give Hart a bad bump, just the last one. Dude was only 41 at Starrcade but looked and moved like a 60 year old, he was far from the epitome of health. God knows how many botched moves he'd taken over the years from dudes Goldberg's size or bigger.

Also it wasn't the kick that fucked Hart up so bad, it was hitting his head on the ground when the turnbuckle figure four got botched later in the match. Which was more clearly Goldberg's fault for not grabbing Hart's leg to keep him up, but you sorta have to wonder if Hart ever actually practiced it with Goldberg first or not. He already had a reputation for his lack of technical skill at that point so maybe use your expertise to protect yourself.

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It's true, Bret pinned a lot of stuff on Goldberg that he shouldn't have. You have a responsibility to protect the other guy in the ring, but you also have a responsibility to protect yourself, especially against a green opponent.

People always talk about Arquette, but at the time that it aired it was actually a pretty exciting / entertaining moment. Obviously Jarrett was going to crush him and get the title back a week later. What really destroyed the WCW world title was a few months earlier when they did two title vacates inside of one month, first Bret Hart vacating it and then Chris Benoit winning it and immediately leaving. This was after Russo was shown the door the first time; Benoit would have stuck around if he'd known Russo was coming back just a couple months later.

Bret Hart wrestled a bunch of times AFTER the Goldberg match, when they knew he was concussed, as well. He could have dropped the title to someone on the way out. He had a fucking hardcore match with Terry Funk on a Nitro, for fuck's sake. That could have been a nice zero-impact technical match with Chris Benoit where Bret dropped the title to Benoit (who then, hopefully, actually stuck around). 2000 WCW would have been way less of a joke if it had started this way instead of what happened.

WWF champion Triple H got to pin both the reigning ECW world champion AND the lineal WCW world champion within a few weeks of that, as well. Anyone who cares about belts and lineages noticed this and it really was the moment when the war was over, even if it limped along for another 13 months.