How Good Was Goldberg Actually?

For just over two years, Goldberg is what every wrestling promoter would sell their soul for. From 1997 to the end of 1999, fans went wild for him, pop culture embraced him with open arms, and Bill Goldberg was one of the biggest stars during wrestling's most notorious era. Bigger than any member of D-Generation X and more over in this period than The Undertaker ever managed in his whole career, Goldberg's period of success is as big as anything wrestling has ever seen.

This is counter-balanced by a deserved reputation as one of the worst in-ring talents to ever reach these heights. It's become a meme, but ending the career of Bret Hart is something that will arguably be the moment that defines Goldberg's career. His matches would have had today's audiences spitting blood with how generic they were, and his lack of ability to deliver layered promos has aged like a pint of milk.

If Eric Bischoff knew how to book better feuds, Goldberg may have had a longer run at the top to build a better legacy. If WCW would have promoted their incredible midcard talent to work alongside Bill, he doubtlessly would have had better rivalries than the array of elder statesmen he was forced to work with. If Vince McMahon didn't have a pathological need to remind everyone that WWE is the only place that matters every time he inherited a superstar from WCW, there may have been more chapters in Goldberg's story and a feud with Steve Austin that would have made the maniacal billionaire a truckload of money.

As it is, Goldberg sits alongside the Nintendo 64, MTV's TRL, and Napster as touchstone cultural relics of their time. He was better than WWE's narrative-controlling machine makes him out to be, and his run on top was a phenomenon like very few others in wrestling history, but Goldberg's legacy has all the depth of an ant's swimming pool. 

6/10

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