The SmarK 24/7 Rant for The 8 Days of Goldberg
- This is kind of a goofy Christmas theme on 24/7, as we're celebrating Hanukkah with Goldberg matches. But I haven't done a few of them, so let's line 'em up…
Goldberg v. Booker T
From Nitro, July 2000. Booker was World champion and I think Goldberg was a heel or something. They brawl on the floor right away and Goldberg whips Booker into the railing and heads back in, but Booker catches him with an axe kick on the way in. Goldberg no-sells it and hits a clothesline out of the corner, then follows with the snap powerslam. And then Jeff Jarrett runs in for some reason and hits Goldberg with a chair, which is also no-sold. Spear for JJ, but now Ernest Miller comes in and puts Goldberg down with a spin kick, before Booker hits a sidekick and the Bookend for the pin at 2:24. Goldberg immediately pops up and spears Booker, then Jackhammers him. What a clusterfuck, but then consider who was running the show. 1/2*
US title: Raven v. Goldberg
Hey, a special all-Jewish feature. From Nitro, April 20 1998, the night after Raven won it at Spring Stampede 98. Raven tries tackling him into the corner and dropkicks him out of the corner, then takes it to the floor. That proves to be a mistake, as Goldberg tosses him into the railing a few times. Back in, Goldberg gets his rolling heel hook, but Raven makes the ropes. Goldberg uses the BRET KILLER to put Raven on the floor again, but Raven uses a chair this time and takes over. The DROP TOEHOLD OF DOOM gets two. Raven goes to a chinlock on the mat as there's this awesome energy from the crowd, considering that Goldberg hadn't won a title match yet. Raven gets a corner clothesline and Goldberg no-sells and spears him, and the place goes BATSHIT INSANE. The Flock starts running in and Goldberg destroys them all in sequence without breaking a sweat, ending with a Jackhammer on Reis. Raven tries to run away, but "fans" tackle him and toss him back into the ring, and it's spear, Jackhammer, new US champion at 5:00. WOW. What human being with a functioning brain could possibly have fucked up Bill Goldberg and not drawn millions off him? The fan reaction here was just one of the most amazing things ever seen. That finish with the planted fans spontaneously preventing the heel from running was seriously one of the best ideas WCW ever did, with the combination of grassroots babyface star and hated heel working perfectly together. What a great little match. ***
Goldberg v. Ric Flair
From RAW in 2003, although the menu listed this as their 2000 Nitro match. Goldberg comes out of a supply closet here, which kind of shows that WWE didn't really have any clue at times, either. Flair immediately jumps Goldberg with a pair of brass knuckles and gets a fast two from special referee Randy Orton. Flair throws the chops in the corner and gets a backdrop suplex for two, but Goldberg no-sells another chop and hits a press slam. Snap powerslam gets a very slow two from Orton. Goldberg clotheslines Flair for another slow count. The ensuing argument allows Flair to hit him with a chair, but Goldberg chokes both Evolution members down until Flair goes low to break. Flair then blatantly goes to the nuts to set up the figure-four, with Orton helping out in every way possible. Flair finally releases and pounds on the leg, but Goldberg has had enough and destroys both Flair and Orton with spears. Shawn Michaels runs in and adds a superkick for Orton, allowing the Jackhammer on Flair. Shawn uses Orton's hand to count the pin at 7:17. This was fine but forgettable. ** And don't forget to watch SLAMBALL~!
WCW World title: Goldberg v. DDP
From Halloween Havoc 98. I haven't done this one in a while, so here's a redo. This is more famous for running over the allotted PPV time and airing on Nitro the next night than anything as a match. Goldberg powers DDP into the corner a few times to start, as DDP won't go down. Page gets in his face and they both fall to the floor on the lockup, and back in. Page sweeps the leg and Goldberg does a backflip to escape (sweet!) and takes Page down with a cross armbreaker. Page makes the ropes and gets a jawbreaker to slow him down, but a Diamond Cutter attempt is casually blocked by Goldberg, putting DDP on the floor. Back in, Goldberg tries a wristlock, but Page does a nice reversal before walking into another shoulderblock and bumping out again. Finally he necksnaps Goldberg and follows with a neckbreaker to take over. Russian legsweep out of the corner gets two. Page goes to the facelock on the mat to slow him down further, but Goldberg reverses to a neckbreaker and adds a suplex. Sideslam gets two. Goldberg goes to the cross armbreaker again and Page has to make the ropes again, but a superkick into the corner sets up a blind charge, which results in Goldberg hitting the post. Page goes up with a flying clothesline for two. Goldberg tries a spinebuster and DDP reverses to a DDT, but Goldberg does the All Japan sell, popping up for a spear before collapsing again. Goldberg recovers first and tries the Jackhammer, but the arm is wrecked by the post and it's BANG, Diamond Cutter. The crowd is actually responding quite well to this. Page gets two off that. Page tries another one, but Goldberg reverses to the Jackhammer to finish at 10:24. The point here was never to tease ending the streak, but simply to give Goldberg a good match, and that's what it did. Long enough to be a good story, but short enough not to expose Goldberg, this was clearly his best match. ****
Tags: 24/7, Booker T, DDP, Goldberg, Randy Orton, Raven, Ric Flair, WCW
How come you didn’t review the Hogan/Goldberg title match from Nitro? I love that match. I think it’s funny everyone killed WCW for not doing that match on TV…yet it was the biggest rating ever and their biggest house ever. It still boggles my mind they never did the rematch in a dome somewhere…they couldn’t have reformed the nWo in early ‘99 and have Goldberg plow through Hogan again. Oh well.
And the Raven match is pretty awesome, just from the crowd reaction. I’m looking forward to the development on Goldberg in early 98 on Nitro on 24/7 because I was a WWF/Raw guy and only got into the Goldberg thing with that Raven match.
It did a big rating, but that also translated to zero money in WCW’s pocket. A PPV match, on the other hand, would have done phenomenal buys, and WOULD have translated to money.
And before you bring up the crowd, the building was sold out long before they announced Hogan/Goldberg for television.
Giving away Goldberg v. Hogan on free TV was just plain stupid. The money they could’ve made on ppv(s) could’ve been historic.
What about the 40,000+ in attendance? Did they all get in for free? And i can’t believe that drawing one of the biggest ratings TNT ever had resulted in zero money for WCW…what about all the free publicity that resulted (magazines, tv shows, the Internet, etc. blowing up for Goldberg?)
I still think the mistake was not doing the rematch for money. They were slowly falling behind the WWF at that point and the free TV match gave WCW some momentum. The problem was not following up with a rematch.
Yeah, but if they had done it on PPV, with all of the advertising, hype, and just the fact fans wanted to see the match, they wouldn’t have needed to give the match away for free. They could have had their cake and ate it too, you know?
WCW was still hot enough at the time that they could have still sold out the Georgia Dome, as was proved by that Nitro, but they would have made even more money. Then they could have done the rematch on TNT, I guess, and gotten their huge Nitro rating.
WCW fucked up, as usual, plain and simple.
Now, I’m not saying that that would have kept them in business, but they could have drawn even more money to make the case that they should stay in business when the suits came to shut them down.
bignasty,
No one is saying that they didn’t make money with that show; but like Knighthawk said, they lost out on a hell of alot more.
Ratings don’t related to an immediate cash in anyways. You have to sustain high ratings for a period of time so when you negotiate the next tv contract, you can get paid. WCW was owned by Turner anyways, so that cash was already there.
Think about it, should they have televised Sting-Hogan? Should UFC televise Penn-GSP? All for the sake of popping a rating?
They could’ve done a ppv at the Georgia Dome and held off to that on Starrcade after some more buildup. What kind of rating do you think the Nitro after that would’ve drawn?
It was a dumb decision, period.
Putting that match on free TV made a bigger star out of Goldberg than any PPV match. Why? Because EVERYONE saw it. It made the mainstream media take notice, it made wrestling fans notice, it got everyone’s attention. It was arguably WCW’s finest moment during the Monday Night Wars and they had created the biggest star they had ever created. I don’t get why people have this weird fasicnation with saying WCW made a dumb decision by making Goldberg a mainstream star. They fucked up by not following up….it was right there for them to capitalize on and they didn’t.
You guys are looking at the one buyrate that one match with Hogan would have made (which they could have made up with a rematch) and missing all the future earnings they got from making Goldberg into such a big star. It wasn’t about popping a rating…it was making Goldberg, and they succeeded.
So you’re saying the only way to make a big star is by getting a huge win on TV? I think not.
I’m saying that a feud with Hogan could’ve headlined a couple of ppvs, including turning Hogan face and tag teaming with Goldberg against the NWO and other variations.
Remember, WCW was still winning some Monday nights in the ratings leading up to that match. I don’t remember if they were still on the long streak of wins against RAW or if at that point, WCW and WWF were trading weeks. Regardless, it didn’t call for a desperate move like this.
Also, from what I remember, Goldberg was pretty over already, so he didn’t “need” a win from Hogan on live tv.
I have done Hogan v. Goldberg, several times actually and at least once on 24/7.
“What human being with a functioning brain could possibly have fucked up Bill Goldberg and not drawn millions off him?”
Isn’t this the moment in time where we blame Kevin Nash for ending the streak and coming up with the Fingerpoke of Doom despite all logic saying that Goldberg probably should have remained an undefeated champion until Starrcade 1999?
No.
Goldberg should have beat Hogan at Halloween Havoc, then rematched him at Starrcade 1998 and eventually dropped the belt to someone like Bret Hart after being painstakingly out-wrestled, out-maneuvered and out-smarted. That was the only way to defeat a character like Goldberg. Afterwards, Bill could have claimed to have learned a lot from his first defeat and become a better overall wrestler, since the “walk out, breathe fire, blow smoke, Spear, Jackhammer, pin” shit wouldn’t have lasted forever.
I always found it odd that Goldberg even got over the way he did, since everyone and their trainer had been doing squash matches against low-level talent on the weekend shows for years. Beating up someone in three minutes was nothing new. Vader did it in 1991, remember? Maybe the crowd was hungry for it or something, I don’t know.
I’m not going to try to explain why people were so into Goldberg in 1998, but here’s a theory (my take only, your mileage may vary).
There was such an influx of new fans in that time period who weren’t watching during the days of squashes on RAW, Superstars, World Championship Wrestling, etc. that when they saw this guy who came out and just annihilated people (established stars or not), they fell in love with him. Fans were so used to seeing star versus star matches on RAW and Nitro, in addition to PPVs, with their relatively wishy-washy booking, that maybe this clicked for the fans.
Moral of the story: jobbers and squash matches are an effective tool for getting guys over.
I think you are right on target here. Long-live a good squash match!
Another thing that was great about squash matches is that the heels could REALLY heel-out and decimate their opponents without having to worry about hurting their opponents heat by beating them so soundly. I can remember a Superstars match between Mr. Perfect and Sonny Blaze in 1990 on Superstars where he just viciously took him apart with his whole arsenal and gave him a particularly violent looking perfect-plex, he just snapped the poor guy’s head back and drove him to the mat, and then slapped him around a little after he got the pin. It left quite the impression in my 10 year old mind, that’s for sure!
Goldberg has IT, plain and simple. He has a unique aura about him that VERY few others have/had. There was something immediately different about him when he debuted, which is somewhat ironic given that he looked just like Steve Austin (until he got in the ring, certainly).
I like that idea. I wish WWE would use some UFC style realism now and again. I kinda like it when UFC guys say they were beaten by the better man, and they gotta go away and train to get better. There’s a decent storyline in their somewhere for a younger WWE guy like Kingston or Bourne.
Anyone have an idea why they have to over-dub Goldberg’s original WCW music every time? I’m not a huge fan of the WWE rehash. Plus, the over-dubbing kills some pretty cool moments here.
Because it’s production music that WWE hasn’t bought the right to use.
I think I know why Goldberg got so over in 1998. The fans were getting sick of the whole NWO angle so they wanted something fresh. Someone who wasnt in the NWO angle. It seemed like everyone wanted to join the NWO around that time.
And Goldberg had this look to him in which he looked like he wasn’t afraid of the NWO and he could kick their ass.
Goldberg should had kept the title past Starrcade in 98 and held it until atleast Superbrawl 99 in which Flair could had won the title away from him in a screwy ending match since Flair was playing WCW Prez at that point.
Just in case anyone was curious here are some of the stats on the July 1998 Georgia dome Nitro that I saved from back in the day when I used to care about this stuff haha –
As of June 12, 1998 they’d sold about 27,000 tickets before they started promoting Hogan/Goldberg for the local Atlanta media, although it was originally intended as a non-title dark match. They sold a bunch of tickets over Father’s Day weekend (5,000 – 7000).
Total attendance: 41,412 (in true WCW fashion they actually announced it lower at 39,919.)
Paid attendance: 36,506
Total Gate: $906,338
Merchandise: $300,000+ (WCW record at the time)
At the time it was the fourth largest crowd ever for a pro-wrestling event in America and the fifth highest ever cable rating for a pro wrestling match, although it likely had the highest actual viewership.
The only ones with higher ratings at the time were
a Hulk Hogan vs Roddy Piper match from MTV in 1985, Wendi Richter vs Fabulous Moolah from MTV in 1984, the 1988 Royal Rumble, and Flair/Sting from COTC #1.
Hogan/Piper did a 9.1 rating… wow.
Where does Hogan-Andre on NBC (with the twin referee angle) figure in with these numbers?
“Where does Hogan-Andre on NBC (with the twin referee angle) figure in with these numbers?”
Andre-Hogan was the biggest match in the history of American wrestling in terms of viewers, with 33 million viewers watching.
Hogan-Piper’s 9.1 is a little misleading since a 9.1 in 1985 wouldn’t mean as many viewers watching as a 9.1 in 2008 or a 9.1 10 years ago.
Yes, that is true. Keep in mind I was referring specifically to matches that aired on cable television. Andre/Hogan is by far the most watched match ever on cable, broadcast, PPV or otherwise.
About 35% of American’s subscribed to cable in 1985 (up to about 69% today), although I bet a lot of them were in New York City, a hot WWF market.
Another way to look at it is that the 9.1 represents the % of the audience that had cable TV at the time that watched that particular match, which is still an impressive number.
Oh and first day ticket sales for the Georgia Dome Nitro – about 14,500 tickets for a $540,000 gate. In fact they originally had the dome scaled for 25,000 seats before they reconfigured it to accommodate a larger crowd.
I agree with the guy who said that putting Hogan/Golberg on free tv was worth it because it made Golberg WCW’s big star via such a high profile win, on free tv as opposed to on PPV.
Hell, if they DID do Hogan/Golberg on a PPV, you don’t think that Hogan would have forced WCW to downplay the victory or show highlight footage of such a major moment, via a fourth-wall breaking moment of Bischoff and Hogan refusing to allow footage of the match be shown? Or the notion of Hogan using a free tv Nitro rematch to utterly crush Golberg in a rematch to win the belt?
The flaw was in the follow-up and Hogan and Nash both scheming to keep Golberg down the card and ultimately the crap we saw with Starcade ‘98 and the Fingerpoke of Doom.
Years later, and I’m still mixed about Bill Goldberg. I mean he was a good power-wrestler with a Steve Austin/Hulk Hogan type of Superstar unbeatable monster look. I liked him, but would he have lasted much longer even if Nash hadn’t pulled the wheels under him?
I mean look what Bret did to him in Canada, and WCW went into panic mode and piped in the Goldberg chants because God-forbid that anyone not named Hogan or Nash get over for a mini-feud that could have drew . . . you know . . . money.
I never get Hogan nowadays, as he could have simply put over one guy and then got a major match and victory over another one. I almost believe the internet smarks now when it comes to Hogan. I almost believe it because of the smirk he gave me when I called him the “god of wrestling.” It was like “you’re buying it too, huh, brother.”
Same with Nash. Nash winning the the title from Goldberg wasn’t the problem. He had done a better job of allowing people know he was once a unstopable monster in 1995 – they could have sold it on that point and made it a battle of the superhuman Diesel vs. the superhuman Goldberg.
Alas, WCW didn’t think of it – and . . . well they never used it even they did think of it.
That Bret / Goldberg angle was setup SO marvelously well. That may be one of the best angles ever conceived. To this day I can’t believe they didn’t go anywhere with it. Great TV.
WCW should have expected that anyone, even Goldberg would have got booed out of the building paired up against Bret though, so the piping in was a little silly.
This one wasn’t WCW’s fault. Right as Bret was getting ready to return and pay off the angle, Owen died. Nobody remembers this, but the night after Owen died, Nash and Goldberg were going to have a title match on The Tonight Show. Bret was supposed to return that night and cost Goldberg the match. It never happened, obviously, and the whole Goldberg feud was more or less forgotten by the time Bret returned due to the fact that it was going to be impossible to bring Bret back as a heel.
I thought it was supposed to be Nash/Bret on the Tonight Show?
It’s really not a big deal that WCW did the show on TV instead of PPV. 1998 was their most profitable year. Putting it on PPV wouldn’t have altered the course of history.
The only thing that would have changed was a bigger paycheck. And is anyone really so peeved that Hogan didn’t make more money because WCW gave away a title match for free?