The WWE Hall of Famer recaps his most recent trip to Saudi Arabia.
WWE is almost a full week removed from their Elimination Chamber show in Saudi Arabia. Before going into WrestleMania 38 to face Brock Lesnar, Universal Champion Roman Reigns defended his title against Goldberg. Reigns was able to retain after locking in a guillotine choke onto Goldberg.
Earlier this month, Goldberg made his return to WWE to begin the build to his match with Reigns. He recapped the match, his trip to Saudi Arabia and the fallout of the match during his CarCast podcast and shared that he was dealing with COVID-19 when WWE contacted him about the match.
He said he had two weeks to prepare and as he was discussing this, he mentioned that a documentary is in the works.
Well, I’m again behind the eight ball. Not only do a plethora of people understand what the outcome [of my matches] will most likely be, but I obviously had an extremely short time to get ready for it. You know… COVID. You know, I hadn’t trained in three months, I have COVID when I get the phone call to go [build to he and Reigns’ match]. I literally had two weeks in the gym to get ready for this. So, it’s — what people don’t understand and it will come out in the documentary is that it’s tough to do that as a 20-year-old. It’s even more difficult to do it as a 30-year-old, a 40-year-old and it’s almost impossible [as a] 55-year-old. It’s — I’m one of the .003 percent of humans on the planet that can pull something like that off. But in doing it, it’s very tough mentally to keep yourself in a positive space because you’ve got so many negatives going against you, right? And then, 90 percent of them understand what the storyline is gonna be so I’m fighting an uphill battle the whole way but you know, at this point and throughout the years I’ve been able to do this in a short schedule, you go out, you do your job as best to your ability. You don’t — you can’t contribute to the creative of the outcome because that’s not my job. I just go out and try to perform the best job that I can and hope that people can appreciate it in some way, shape or fashion. Now these days with social media, things are different. Back in the day, wrestling was extremely interactive, right? When somebody had a chant, these fans couldn’t wait to get on board with it. Now, you got schmucks that wanna be the person that yells during somebody’s chant, right? To completely change the narrative, right? And then they go on social media and go, ‘Hey, I was that schmuck that did that’ and try to get some adoration. So, it’s a different crowd.
Goldberg spoke about viewers being aware that he’s coming in for a program to build Reigns up. He said he does not write the script and just follows it and if he can make Roman look solid heading into WrestleMania, then that’s his job.
Well, Roman [Reigns] is a great dude. Yeah [our match has been a long time coming]. It would’ve been nice for me to do it in my 40s but I had to do it when I’m 55 [he laughed]. I think they planned that out so he had more of an opportunity to be able to beat me but, no, let’s be perfectly honest, I would’ve squished him 15 years ago but now it’s a different story. I’m 55, I do two matches a year. What am I gonna do? Come in at one of the bigger pay-per-views and I’m gonna beat the WWE Universal Champion and take the belt home with me for six months? And then come back as champion? So, I mean hey, I don’t write the script, I just kind of follow it — well kind of follow it and you know, the fact is that like I said, one of the reasons why I came back is to give back to the business and if I can set Roman up and make him look like a million bucks going into WrestleMania against Brock [Lesnar] then that’s my job.
Prior to Elimination Chamber, Goldberg said the match with Reigns could be his final mission in the world of pro wrestling. He previously confirmed that he had one more match left on his WWE contract.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the CarCast podcast with an H/T and link back to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
