WWE Hall of Famer Bill Goldberg joined today’s edition of The Bump where the former multi-time world champion reminisced on his dominant undefeated streak in WCW, and how he was trying to emulate boxing legend Mike Tyson with his performances. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Says it was very important to have a special aura built up around him:
“Oh, it meant everything for me to be different. It’s been documented a million times and I’ll be the first person to say it: I’m not a chain wrestler. I never aspired to be, I don’t have a wrestling background. I have a martial arts background, I have a football background, and so I applied my senses and my techniques in my background and informed a character. I mean, quite obviously the UFC was huge at that point, and it was getting nothing but bigger. It was gonna be the biggest thing going. It was giving professional wrestling a run for its money. And I figured I’d combine the two and everything I’d worked on throughout the years, and come up with this character. And I wanted to be completely different.”
Says he was trying to emulate what Mike Tyson did in boxing in his prime:
“I knew I would feel the wrath of all the wrestling fans, and all the American wrestling fans in that I wasn’t the chain wrestler, I wasn’t the guy that came out and did sequential moves. I was the guy that came out and just ate you and left. And I wanted to emulate what Mike Tyson did in the world of boxing. And I think that I completed my task pretty well. I wanted to be the guy that no matter what had happened prior, you had to sit down and take two to five to eight minutes of your time and be solely invested on what’s on the screen. And I think I accomplished that.”
(H/T and transcribed by 411 Mania)