WCW Goldberg vs. WWE Goldberg

[AkydefGoldberg]

I got round to watching the Ultimate Goldberg special on Sky Sports today and was able to catch Goldberg's debut win in WCW vs. Hugh Morris, his crazy, action packed US title win vs. Raven and I was hooked.

It just shows the difference in booking, in WCW he was to streamroll over anyone in his path where in WWE in 2003, his lack of wrestling fluidity probably saw him booked poorly so by the time he left in 2004, the fans just weren't invested.

Had Goldberg wrestled that WCW style in WWE during the Attitude era, I think he'd have garnered a similiar reaction as in WCW because it seems the crowd demographics were the same (mainly older males).

It's a shame his WWE run didn't work out but still cool to see him in the WWE for a brief time.

[Tom]

Goldberg is a perfect example of how a character just clicks with an audience. He had the perfect look, the perfect moveset for his character, the perfect entrance and some great booking along with that until Kevin Nash ruined it. In a company where it was hard to succeed over the so called "big boys", he came in and became an instant star. Along with DDP, he was the only WCW produced guy to become a major star during WCW's successful years. That says it all in my opinion.

I still think to this day that people under estimate how big Goldberg was. He truly was a superstar, Austin was probably the only guy in wrestling that was bigger than him in 1998, and nobody in wrestling has ever been bigger than Austin was in 98. I have been watching a few old episodes of WCW Nitro recently for nostalgic reasons and its rare to find a guy who gets a pop from the audience the way Goldberg did.

His WWE run was terrible but I will always remember the Elimination Chamber match at Summerslam 2003. It was the only time we got to see a glimpse of Goldberg from his successful WCW days and he made what was a rather boring match interesting in my opinion. Its a pity he didn't win the world title at that event because it would have made for an awesome moment!

[Str8Shooter]

Yeah WWE Goldberg was a shell of what we saw from him in WCW. I honestly can barely remember anything about his WWE run other than debuting against The Rock and when he kicked in the pod in the Elimination Chamber. Also when he put on Goldust's wig, which is widely regarded as the main proof his WWE run sucked.

His WCW run was amazing though, especially up to the streak ending. People who weren't around back then watching don't quite realize how huge he was in that time period. Like Tom said he was right up there in recognition with Austin when he was at his peak. No easy feat.

[Everlong]

The biggest problem with his run in WWE is that they were basically trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They tried to make him wrestle 20+ minute matches, and they never really tried to build on his "unstoppable" character from WCW that made him such a hit. He basically became a watered down babyface that they kept telling us was a beast, but never really gave us any reason to believe it.

To this day though I think he remains one of the most underrated/underappreciated performers in the last 30 years of the business.

[Str8Shooter]

The biggest problem with his run in WWE is that they were basically trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They tried to make him wrestle 20+ minute matches, and they never really tried to build on his "unstoppable" character from WCW that made him such a hit. He basically became a watered down babyface that they kept telling us was a beast, but never really gave us any reason to believe it.

To this day though I think he remains one of the most underrated/underappreciated performers in the last 30 years of the business.

That was a big problem yeah. WWE didn't want him to come in and handily beat any of their top guys the way people were accustomed to him doing in WCW.

[flock u]

When it comes to WWE Goldberg and WCW Goldberg these are really two different beasts.


for 1 when he was in WCW he was pretty protected and had guys like Kevin Sullivan guiding him and teaching him how he should act out there they kept him low key for the most part until the fans caught on and started cheering him like mad and. The Matches were short because they knew he didn't have much skill in the ring at the time was pretty green and so they had to be short to help hide that fact from the fans.



When he was in WWE they wanted him to work longer matches and that really exposed his lack of real ability to the fans. Not to mention he was forced to talk a lot more there and again it exposed his lack of real ability in that area as well. But you can't really fault WWE for this either because if they had brought in Goldberg and had him do what he was doing during his win streak in WCW the fans would have complained that they were re enacting the WCW storyline and boo'd him outright from the start most likely.