I genuinely feel sorry for Bill Goldberg. He’s a very easy-to-appreciate and easy-to-understand kind of wrestler. He’s not the guy you want to work long matches given that his skill set tends towards a shorter, tighter kind of match, but he fucking looks cool and his entrance is timeless. Somehow, WCW worked around that and managed to turn a specialist worker into one of its hottest superstars, and the greatest squash monster of all time. Goldberg kept WCW alive during its more turbulent years, all while wrestling matches that rarely lasted longer than the number of fingers on your hands. He was less-is-more personified and the kind of wrestler that was a no-brainer slam-dunk to book. Give him a bunch of goons and he’ll run through them. Give him a big bad hoss monster and chances are he can lift the dude up for a Jackhammer.

Unfortunately, a bunch of stuff came together to work against his resume. First, he got a nasty reputation because of Bret Hart’s numerous scathing interviews, and then fans unfairly dunked on the concept of him as a worker, deciding he wasn’t good because he could not wrestle long or couldn’t do a Figure One thousand. This whole attempt to frame Goldberg as one of the worst wrestlers ever gets particularly stupid when the argument amounts to listing things his matches didn’t need him to do. I don’t need Goldberg to work a match like Rick Martel; I love him when he’s being the most unadulterated organic version of himself in the ring. And here’s the thing, he got over with the wrestling world being himself and doing things that play to his strengths. And man, you can give Goldberg a million weaknesses, but the things that made him cool and resonate will always outshine whatever little cracks he may have.

There’s skill involved in making briefer matches feel overwhelming, in giving the audience enough fuck-you intensity and conviction that they’re satisfied with a few minutes of destruction and want to tune in to next week’s carnage. You can acknowledge how much his opponents contributed to that while still giving him credit for possessing that sort of innate sublime charisma and sense of self that makes a wrestler a bona fide attraction. He carried himself like a star and he looked like one, and that spilled over into his wrestling.

Over the years, all those whispers of how he couldn’t quite work the more “elaborate” WWE style or how he was the most dangerous thing in the world drew the ire of the more critical but less critically thinking fans. Yes, accidents unfortunately happen and yes, Goldberg deserves to be angrily called out for those accidents, but it’s not enough justification to reduce his entire body of work to a fluke or attribute it wholly to his colleagues. His reputation suffered further when he returned during the last years of Vince and was entangled in the messy transitional years of Vince’s dying regime. Didn’t help that they fed an extremely over Fiend to him or that he badoinked Taker on his head, which of course pissed off the Taker fans and the botch police.

By the time Goldberg returned for his retirement match, he had not wrestled since losing to Roman Reigns at Elimination Chamber in 2022. His opponent was Gunther, who had regained the World Heavyweight Championship from Jey Uso barely a month earlier to conclude their debacle of a feud. Their issue dated back to Bad Blood 2024, where Gunther mocked Goldberg from the ring and dragged his son Gage into the insult. Goldberg returned the following June to collect on that humiliation, challenging Gunther to one final match at Saturday Night’s Main Event on July 12, 2025. Atlanta was the obvious place to end it. This was where Goldberg played professional football, became WCW’s great homegrown phenomenon and defeated Hulk Hogan for the world title. WWE therefore gave him a goodbye consolation title match against the only wrestler in the company talented enough to make this indulgence work.

Gunther isn’t just another “good pair of hands”; he’s the golden mittens Triple H trusts for this sort of thing. When putting together a match for an older veteran who is either retiring or returning, it makes sense to use one of the safest and smartest workers on your roster. Gunther’s game lends itself particularly well to the assignment because he’s all about the little details. For older part-timers like Goldberg, the little details matter because they don’t have the same stamina for athletic bursts and you can’t have them partake in big action sequences because they probably can’t take those kinds of bumps anymore. Gunther knows how to sell for different opponents, and he can be comedic in understated ways that still protect the seriousness of his character. He can also be menacing but still retain enough finesse to seem cowardly when the situation calls for it. And Gunther is very good at understanding exactly when to get under the crowd’s skin. His offense is timeless: chops, big boots, powerbombs and his patented sleeper hold. He may not always appeal to the casual fan, but he possesses the kind of wrestling IQ that match producers appreciate and opponents trust.

The match begins as a Goldberg match probably should. He barrels into Gunther with shoulder blocks and punches, feeding off an Atlanta crowd that’s red hot. Gunther chops him, but Goldberg laughs them off and invites him to keep swinging. There is no attempt to convince us that Goldberg has suddenly become a different wrestler at 58. He’s still that cool badass who came through the WCW Power Plant. He remains an intentionally straightforward instrument, so Gunther understands that his job is to feed Goldberg while still controlling the pace. How does the Ring General pace this match? Gunther works out how much Goldberg can give him at a time and leave enough room between those bursts for him to recover. There’s a bit of a balancing act there because you want the crowd waiting for Goldberg to get another opening without making them feel like everyone’s just waiting for him to catch his breath. Gunther’s selling helps fill that space, since his own need to recover gives Goldberg time without making the pauses feel entirely at his expense. Also, Goldberg no-selling early on is more than just a callback to his usual gimmick of shrugging off offense; it also justifies to the audience why Gunther needs to resort to cunning in this match.

Gunther begins stretching the clock almost immediately. He rolls outside, creates distance and makes Goldberg spend precious energy pursuing him. When Goldberg finally charges, Gunther moves and sends him crashing through the barricade with a missed Spear. It’s a great bump that Bill took and a neat signpost to the audience that his greatest weapon in this match is his own body, which at 58 is more foe than friend for him. I don’t like matador spots in 2026 wrestling because they have been done so many times that you see them a mile away, and so should the wrestler getting matador’ed, but it does make sense with Goldberg, who has always been presented as the human equivalent of a shotgun. So the appealing question now is that since Gunther can’t out-firepower Goldberg, what are his tactical options?

Gunther answers this when he turns his attention toward the braced knee, kicking at it and forcing Goldberg to carry his own weight unevenly. The leg work gives them something to return to and eventually delays an important cover, although I feel like its consequences could have shaped more of the action between those moments. Goldberg sells it very decently. He puts enough strain into his expressions to resemble a wounded beast: diminished and struggling to remain upright, yet still dangerous enough that approaching him carelessly could get Gunther killed. And Gunther, man. I love how he acts like a pissed-off Home Alone villain, trudging around, taking horrific bumps and wondering how many more traps are left.

This is where Gunther earns his money. He slows the match without allowing it to become lifeless, buying Goldberg time between his limited explosions while acting as though those bursts have genuinely hurt him. Gunther can bully Goldberg with chops and boots, then retreat the moment the old monster begins building momentum. It’s such a treat to watch Gunther do that. Even Goldberg’s spinebuster feels more impressive because Gunther gives it gravitas by acting like it’s the worst one he has ever taken. The crowd also does plenty of work for them, roaring whenever Goldberg rises and treating the possibility of one clean Spear as though it might be enough to actually win this fight.

Sadly, WWE starts pulling out its usual dumb trinkets just when the match starts taking some interesting form. Gunther avoids another Spear, leaving Goldberg to crash into Charles Robinson. Fucking ref bump. With the referee down, Gunther removes the knee brace and uses it to batter Goldberg’s injured leg. Which is a bit hammy because it would have made more sense for him to simply target the leg with the brace still on. It’s a vulnerable joint on a wrestler who needs to plant his feet to tackle or lift you, and Gunther has perfectly good boots. Sure, getting hit with the brace should hurt, but the match needs to give that extra business some consequence beyond the sight of a bad guy doing something bad when the ref isn’t looking. I don’t see how a few shots with it tell us much more about Goldberg’s vulnerability than sustained, deliberate attacks to the leg would have. In typical modern WWE fashion, we get the referee out of the way and introduce a prop so the moment looks more dramatic without adding any serious substance to the overall spirit of the narrative.

He then wanders over to Gage Goldberg, shoves him and draws him across the barricade before security intervenes. I still hate the Gage spot; it’s just there to buy time for the finish. The people in Atlanta were already desperate to see Goldberg get one last W, so involving his son adds useless cheap family melodrama to a retirement match that already had all the emotion it needed. Plus, it diminishes what Gunther is capable of in terms of running the match. But I get it, it’s Gunther. He’s a petty savant. He’s WWE’s tallest man with a Napoleon complex. He can’t just win. He needs to win spiritually. He needs to dominate philosophically. For a relic of a battle tank like Goldberg, few things in wrestling matter anymore. But he’s doing this because he wants his son to experience what other kids lived through in the glorious heyday of the ’90s. I really get it, the legalistic forensic voice in me just hates it.

Gunther’s preoccupation with Gage nevertheless gives Goldberg his opening. He catches the champion with the Spear and somehow lifts him for one final Jackhammer, although the damaged knee slows Goldberg’s cover and a second referee takes precious time reaching the ring. Gunther kicks out. It is the match’s only convincing suggestion that WWE might actually lose its mind and place the World Heavyweight Championship on Goldberg, and the crowd’s rabid reaction supplies whatever credibility the possibility lacks.

Goldberg has nothing left after the Jackhammer. Gunther catches him in the sleeper, and Goldberg briefly fights toward his feet while Atlanta begs him to escape. There is no final Spear waiting for him and no miraculous reserve of strength. Gunther tightens his grip, drags him back down and leaves him unconscious for the referee stoppage. We get a trusty WWE-style finish to protect Goldberg in defeat: he isn’t pinned and he doesn’t submit; he just faints. It also solidifies Gunther as the guy going around killing legends (shame how this fizzled out by 2026), and it builds his résumé for his eventual retirement of Cena later that year.

Goldberg’s appeal was always easy to understand, and somehow WWE keeps finding ways to complicate it because they want him to work their kind of match. Gunther does plenty to keep this moving, and I enjoyed watching him figure out how to solve Goldberg, but eventually we’re waiting on referees and watching Gage get involved when Atlanta was already willing to lose its mind for a Spear and a Jackhammer. How much more convincing did these people need? An old warhorse who famously uses his legs for most of his offense, which involves either tackling or lifting someone, gets targeted in said leg by a smarter bad guy known for targeting weak points. There’s a perfectly enjoyable Goldberg match in here, with Gunther giving his offense enough weight that you can briefly entertain the ridiculous possibility of him winning the belt, but they keep dragging us through extra business we didn’t need. It’s the man’s last match and they’re still trying to figure out how to make him fit their system. WCW had this figured out decades ago.

★★.75 — 2.75 — They Almost Had It