As outlined above, one of the major flaws in the Invasion angle was that the WWE refused to invest in the contracts of the major stars. One of the biggest that had never appeared in the WWE was ex-WCW Power Plant graduate, Bill Goldberg. Goldberg had become a major player after his incredible undefeated streak, that was booked to near perfection. The problem was, that when WWE finally decided to take a chance on him in 2003, at times they struggled to find the right way to promote him. It started off well, with a hype package during WrestleMania 19 and an effective debut in which the Rock received a Spear for claiming hed beaten everyone there was to beat in WWE. A few weeks later at Backlash, Goldberg picked up his first big win by pinning the Rock. His next stop was a feud with real life rival Chris Jericho, which was a match that fans wanted to see since it never properly happened in WCW. While it turned out a decent match, the storyline leading to it made Goldberg look a bit brainless being constantly outsmarted by Jericho. Nevertheless, Goldberg kept rolling. Soon after, he became embroiled in his first Heavyweight Title feud with Triple H. While HHH was legitimately injured, WWE decided to keep the title on Triple H rather than switch it to Goldberg, despite fans being well behind him. A month later at Unforgiven, he finally won the title but dropped it only two months later at Armageddon in a triple threat match with HHH and Kane. His final feud in his short year, was against Brock Lesnar culminating in their hugely disappointing match at Wrestlemania 20 in which both were roundly booed. Its a popular opinion that Goldbergs WWE run was a failure. Bill however, played his part. He smashed through a lot of people in his stay and on a lot of occasions looked like a genuine monster. Part of WCWs genius in booking Goldberg was that he came out, wrecked someone and left. The WWE style was different in that he had to speak up more and also generally had to carry longer matches and no disrespect to Bill but he was never a ring technician. Its hard to therefore say that WWE dropped the ball, but they definitely missed some glaring opportunities to make money from him. Arguably the title should have been put on him sooner, especially with HHH barely even able to walk. Heading into his match at Unforgiven, his career was also on the line which made his win too obvious and probably hurt the buy rate. Although Austin sent him off at WrestleMania with a Stunner, the storyline was really Brock vs. Austin featuring Goldberg. Fans never got to see the dream match of the 90s between Austin and Goldberg. On top of this had the WWE tried to keep Goldberg around he could have worked more against Austin and also gone up against workers he hadnt worked much with in WWE like Kurt Angle, Eddie Guerrero or even JBL who emerged as a top heel soon after.
As outlined above, one of the major flaws in the Invasion angle was that the WWE refused to invest in the contracts of the major stars. One of the biggest that had never appeared in the WWE was ex-WCW Power Plant graduate, Bill Goldberg. Goldberg had become a major player after his incredible undefeated streak, that was booked to near perfection. The problem was, that when WWE finally decided to take a chance on him in 2003, at times they struggled to find the right way to promote him. It started off well, with a hype package during WrestleMania 19 and an effective debut in which the Rock received a Spear for claiming hed beaten everyone there was to beat in WWE. A few weeks later at Backlash, Goldberg picked up his first big win by pinning the Rock. His next stop was a feud with real life rival Chris Jericho, which was a match that fans wanted to see since it never properly happened in WCW. While it turned out a decent match, the storyline leading to it made Goldberg look a bit brainless being constantly outsmarted by Jericho. Nevertheless, Goldberg kept rolling. Soon after, he became embroiled in his first Heavyweight Title feud with Triple H. While HHH was legitimately injured, WWE decided to keep the title on Triple H rather than switch it to Goldberg, despite fans being well behind him. A month later at Unforgiven, he finally won the title but dropped it only two months later at Armageddon in a triple threat match with HHH and Kane. His final feud in his short year, was against Brock Lesnar culminating in their hugely disappointing match at Wrestlemania 20 in which both were roundly booed. 