100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 74 - Goldberg vs. The Rock
Backlash 2003
I have often praised the Rock for being an incredibly selfless wrestler when it came to making guys look great especially during his main event run. Guys like Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho during their chicken shit heel runs never looked better than when they were facing the Rock.
This, however, is not one of those times.
In fact, this is the complete opposite of that.
Goldberg’s WWE run in 2003 can only be described as a failure. I’ve seen and read many theories about why this is, and most of them are valid points. The Triple H feud, losing at Summerslam, not being dominant enough, having competitive matches every week, Goldberg’s own workrate not meshing with what WWE wanted from a main event talent, being in backstage skits with Goldust a week into his WWE run. All the failures of Goldberg’s 2003 run come back to this match.
Goldberg was one of WCW’s few genuine draws pretty much from 1998 up until his final appearance in the company. Even during its dying days, Goldberg was a rare beacon of hope that the fans enjoyed. Despite WCW’s problems, of which all are well documented and too numerous to list, they had Goldberg who was insanely popular not off the back of great matches. Not off the back of great promos. He was popular because he had an almost unmatched charisma within the ring as one of wrestling’s greatest ever ass kickers. While we all love a good wrestling match, sometimes there is something incredibly satisfying about watching a legitimate badass run through everyone. Goldberg wasn’t complicated, and it was the fact that he was uncomplicated that made him so easy to root for.
So why on earth did WWE mess up something so basic and uncomplicated as “scary man kicks everyone’s ass”.
This is a time when everyone involved should have taken a step back and thought - what do we want to achieve from this match? Do we want a dream match a la Hogan and Rock? Then do that - everyone takes it seriously, you do the staredowns, you treat everyone with respect and don’t try and belittle the opponent or the company that made him famous. Or do you want this purely to put over Goldberg? In this case, you recognise that belittling Goldberg does no favours, nor does having him sell for prolonged periods while the Rock gets to put himself over with his over the top antics.
Everything about this match is wrong. The entire concept of a debut is to put over the debutant. Especially because this is the highest profile signing by the WWE of a wrestler that was not home grown. WWE can’t help themselves though. They conditioned fans to believe that WCW sucked. They spent an entire couple of years after WCW’s collapse reinforcing that fact. Similar to DDP’s WWE debut, they took a look at Goldberg and tried to fit him into the WWE style of wrestling and then when it failed, it was the talent’s fault. Instead of asking themselves “what does this man do well that we can use?”
Even before the match, this conspires to piss me off. Take note that Goldberg was getting huge cheers from the fans within the crowd prior to the match. Then the pre-match promo happens, where Rock cuts an overly hyper, jittery promo where he mocks Goldberg, everything he does or has done, then calls him a whiskey-biscuit bald-headed bitch. And yes, I recognise that is the Rock’s thing - especially Hollywood Rock. But to get back to a previous point, you have to consider what you want from this programme. You are trying to put over Goldberg so he can be your next babyface star and make a shit load of money from him. Coach is on commentary, and that furthers my bad mood. Jerry Lawler in 2003 hammed up his heel commentary to obnoxious degrees, and that’s made worse without JR to at least try and alleviate this. This is the worst version of Lawler, and he’s there with one of my least favourite commentators ever.
If this match reminds me of any match in history, it’s Hulk Hogan vs Shawn Michaels from Summerslam 2005. A match where one wrestler goes out of their way to make their opponent look like shit, oversell to the point of parody, and ultimately just to put the attention on themselves. Unlike Summerslam 2005, however, this was a long term damaging match because the 2005 match was a one-off deal that ultimately had no consequences. This started the derailing of Goldberg’s WWE career that he’d never get close to recovering from. Any aura and mystique surrounding him was gone after this night alone. He’d never fully get the fans on board with him again until his return in 2016.
The Rock didn’t feel like a real scared human being. He looked like the Rock taking the piss out of his opponent. His acting in this match is horrendous. His stalling didn’t put Goldberg over as a monster, instead it just afforded Rock more time to get himself over with his antics. Bizarrely WWE didn’t treat this like a dream match either, they treated it like a big joke where the Rock is pretending to be scared of this pretend badass because wrestling is a fake joke. The Rock didn’t wrestle this match any differently than he wrestled against anyone else during the Hollywood Rock era and if you can’t see why that’s a problem when he’s wrestling Goldberg, I don’t know what to tell you.
Goldberg cannot be selling this much in his debut match. For all WCW got wrong with Goldberg’s WCW Championship run, they at least got his title win right. Hogan came into that match on Nitro as a cocky cool heel. But there was never any illusions that Hogan wasn’t absolutely terrified of Goldberg. Any selling Goldberg did there wasn’t by being outwrestled by Hogan. Hogan used a low blow, or a steel chair to get an advantage and even that was temporary until Goldberg started beating him up and finishing him in what was a 9 minute match. Here we have the Rock kicking his ass, putting him in submissions, the Rock kipping up. Imagine Hogan hulked up in that match before losing, because that’s essentially what the Rock did here.
By the end of the match, the fans are chanting that Goldberg sucks and booing his every move. And why shouldn’t they, based on this match? Rock kicked his ass, took the piss out of him, while Goldberg - the unstoppable winning machine from WCW - just came across as just another guy. He was, to the audience, massively overhyped.
If you manage to make Goldberg jeered in his debut match, you have failed. You have failed as a match, you have failed with your booking. This is a fundamental proof that WWE had absolutely no idea what to do with Goldberg. Goldberg got over in WCW by being an ass kicking machine who would run through fools. Is the Rock entertaining here? I’m sure there’s many people who think so. But that “entertainment” fundamentally went against everything the match should have been, which is a showcase for Goldberg. This was anything but that - it’s a showcase for The Rock, the man who is on his way out of wrestling, not Goldberg, the man that was supposed to dominate Raw for the next year.
Goldberg vs The Rock is one of those matches that in 1999 would have been unfathomable that it could be fucked up. It’s a dream match - it’s something that should have been treated at least comparably to Rock vs Hogan. Instead, it’s the same boring ass 2003 WWE main event featuring a wrestler who was not fit for this style of match, and another that seemed intent on only putting himself over.
Hate it, always have, always will. This match fucking blows and is a disastrous debut that flushed money down the toilet.
Up Next - If you asked me to name the one match to describe the state of the post-Trish / pre-horsewoman era of WWE women’s wrestling. It’s this one.
Previous Entry:
Next Entry:
