The word on the leaves is the reason for this week’s Goldberg show closing promotion Crude referred to comments that Drew McIntyre did not make was due to a timing issue that prevented the WWE champion from being able to make them.
Producing live television is difficult and things happen. The problem is that even if McIntyre had said a few things about the Legends at hand for the Night of Legends so that Goldberg could say that he didn’t believe he meant them, it would still be illogical and false about what makes Bill an attraction.
As many have pointed out, if Goldberg was concerned about active fighters disrespecting Legends, there was another guy who spent the whole night doing it. Randy Orton not only went backstage on Monday insulting Ric Flair, Big Show and Mark Henry, for decades he’s known as the Legend Killer. I think killing is more respectful than … whatever Bill thinks Drew was doing?
We also saw McIntyre repeatedly defending veterans during his rivalry with Orton last year.
The explanation that the promotion the champion should have done before Goldberg came would have provided, I think, is that the Hall of Fame speech supposedly took McIntyre out of his game. Drew has those who came before him in such high regard that having a Legend question his sincerity would be devastating. That was Scot’s big theory / defense during the January 4 closing segment.
But why?
It must be because everyone associates Goldberg’s feuds with the way he uses his microphone skills to twist his opponent’s minds, leading to an intricate psychological war between him and his rivals. Oh, wait, NOBODY WANTS THIS FROM A GOLDBERG PROGRAM.
He may be a 54-year-old man who almost broke Undertaker’s neck when he suffered a concussion in a propaganda coup by a despotic regime, but Goldberg still has appeal. This call remains quite simple: “You are next!”, Lance, jackhammer, repeats.
Monday’s scene arrives too! There would have been no timing problems with the episode if he just left, pointed at the belt with “I want” in his eyes. Drew says “maybe at its peak, old man, but not now”, Goldberg pushes him down, they head bang each other and circle like two bulls as the show goes away. Easypeasy.
There would still be complaints, but people who don’t want to see a Goldberg title dispute in 2021 (a group of fans that I include myself) are unlikely to be influenced, no matter what. Trying to justify your request just complicates things, without changing anyone’s opinion. I would be interested to see an in-depth character arc about aging ex-headliner trying new tricks in a desperate attempt to prove that he can still stay at the top of the card, but it’s not like WWE is going to achieve that in a month.
Reserve, see if your mystique brings back some old fans or attracts some new ones, and hope that the game doesn’t suck.
Fingers crossed Bill only has one more date in his contract for this feud, and the WWE scripts that go further into the first and last 30 seconds of this without the two minutes between them.
So we can start to worry about the outcome of Royal Rumblefight for the WWE title …