Bill Goldberg recently expressed dissatisfaction with how his final match in WWE unfolded and promised to reveal more details in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, former UFC star Chael Sonnen is not pulling any punches. During a recent episode of his show, Beyond the Fight, Sonnen sharply criticized Goldberg for not being smarter about the business of pro wrestling.
“Bill Goldberg. What a doof. I mean, what an absolute doof,” Sonnen remarked.
Sonnen, who often blurred the line between sport and spectacle
in the UFC with his pro wrestling-inspired persona, broke down the cold reality behind Goldberg’s last match.
“Goldberg believes he had a retirement match. But this is how (WWE) sold it to him. There was no retirement match,” Sonnen explained. “There was no ‘You’re the special.’ We want you to come in to put Gunther over.”
Sonnen believes WWE was trying to right a past mistake by having Goldberg put over a new star in Gunther. Speaking from his perspective on WWE’s mindset, Sonnen said they brought Goldberg back, paid him, and used him to elevate Gunther. However, he believes Goldberg would never have agreed to return if he had understood WWE’s endgame.
“You’re dealing with a guy who doesn’t operate in reality,” Sonnen said of Goldberg. “So then you have somebody call him, make him the special one, tell him it’s a retirement match. How important it is for you to go out like this, for you to have your last moment. This is how you sell it on a narcissist, within the company. It wasn’t a retirement match. That was a hook to get him there.”
Days before Goldberg’s retirement match against Gunther on Saturday Night’s Main Event, wrestling legend Jim Cornette made a similar observation on his podcast, Jim Cornette’s Drive Thru. While Cornette did not accuse WWE of selling Goldberg on one special moment, he believed the company’s motivation was likely to use him to elevate Gunther in place of another iconic powerhouse.
“I think they wanted Gunther to beat Brock Lesnar,” Cornette said. “Who’s another smash-mouth, physically dominant guy that Gunther could beat that would get him over in that way besides Brock Lesnar? It’d be Goldberg. There’s nobody else on the list. So, this serves a lot of purposes.”
One purpose, besides raising Gunther’s profile, was for WWE to silence Goldberg, who has been outspoken for years, claiming former WWE CEO and Chairman Vince McMahon owed him one more match after he agreed to face Roman Reigns on short notice in 2022.
Goldberg’s blunt statements about McMahon and WWE may have contributed to a moment that Sonnen likened to the 1997 Montreal Screwjob, where Bret Hart was double-crossed by the company in a match against Shawn Michaels.
After his match, Goldberg began to deliver a post-match retirement speech. But within seconds, he was cut off and the show faded to black. Speaking to Ariel Helwani days later, that moment was a spot of contention for the WWE Hall of Famer.
“They cut me off 30 seconds into my speech, bro. You don’t do that,” said Goldberg.
Sonnen, again speaking of what he feels WWE officials were thinking, said, “They’ve cut Goldberg’s mic. Now that’s the sign.”
He continued saying, “We want you to know we got you. So, when you’re doing that final interview, after we just had you get beat in an ugly match to begin with, we’re going to cut your mic in front of the world so that even somebody as ignorant as you will be able to understand what we’ve done.”
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