Ask 411 Wrestling: What Were Goldberg’s Best Winning Streak Matches?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals.

Through Hel Stryer and brimstone . . . it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Gareth is singing that same old song:

Given Brock’s apparent in-ring retirement at Wrestlemania 42 last night it got me thinking about his theme music.

Is Brock the only person at that level (not talking about guys who arrived and were gone in a year) to keep essentially the same music their entire WWE run?

Appreciate not everyone had music back in the day, so let’s keep a sensible cut-off, say limit it to guys who debuted in the 90’s or later?

Thought it might be an interesting one to research.

For me I’m thinking about real life performers, not characters, so Glenn Jacobs has had different themes as Dr Isaac Yankem DDS, fake Diesel and Kane.

Also, it can be a bit vague around when music is a new theme or just a slight remix or tweak. For me, if its the same tune its the same music, adding additional guitar or an extra sound effect here and there doesn’t change it.

First off, Brock actually hasn’t had the same theme music throughout his entire WWE career. Go back and watch his first match at Backlash 2002 or any match he had during his first month or two on the main roster. He did have an entirely different song than his well-remembered “Next Big Thing” tune. The change was a worthwhile one, though, as the original song was fairly generic and its successor has that iconic hook.

As for WWF/WWE stars who did keep the same song ever since they adopted music, Vince and Shane McMahon come to mind. “No Chance in Hell” became Vinnie Mac’s first and to date only theme shortly after the 1999 Royal Rumble pay per view, where the song was originally the theme for the show, which featured the Royal Rumble match that Vince won. As far as a solo theme, Shane-O-Mac has always used “Here Comes the Money.” He did also come out to “No Chance in Hell” early on, but I consider that to have been more of a stable theme for the Corporation than Shane’s own music.

Another couple of names that pop into my head are Randy Savage and Jerry Lawler. Savage pretty well always used “Pomp and Circumstance,” while Lawler always used an excerpt from “The Great Gate of Kiev,” a classical piece by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky.

I also always tend to think of Booker T in this category, though technically he did veer away from his classic Harlem Heat theme song for a time when he became King Booker and used a more regal tune.

Night Wolf the Wise may be the next, next big thing:

It was reported that Nick Kahn had a meeting with Triple H and HBK. He mentioned about thinking about the future of WWE since a good portion of the roster is in their 40’s. That is a fair assessment. On the women’s side you have Sol Ruca, Roxanne Perez, etc as the future of the women’s division. On the men’s side, who do you think is the heir apparent to lead the WWE in the future? I know WWE is keen on setting up Bronn Breakker to be that guy. But do you Oba Femi should be in that conversation? The man was handpicked by Brock Lesnar to be his opponent. And if the rumor is true that Brock called an audible to retire at WM because he doesn’t trust Triple H to book his retirement, then that’s an even bigger boost for OBA Femi. And listen this isn’t a knock on breakker in any way shape or form, but in my opinion but Oba is better positioned then breakker is to lead WWE. Oba hasn’t been on the roster that long and has already made a huge impact compared to when Brock Lesnar first debuted in the WWE. Oba is an exceptional athlete. He’s extremely over with the audience. His I Am The One promo proved he can hang with the best talker in WWE right now Paul Heymen. Which not a lot of wrestlers can do. What is your opinion on this. Am I dismissing Breakker too soon or is Oba Femi the better choice?

I think you’re trying to force a binary choice here when there doesn’t necessarily have to be one. WWE isn’t required to pick Oba Femi over Bron Breaker or vice versa. They can be pushed at the same level simultaneously, especially for so long as a brand split and multiple world championships exist. In fact, it would be to WWE’s benefit to portray them as being equals to one another rather than positioning one many over the other, because if they’re equals and kept separate, you can eventually build to a big money match.

Bryan feels like something is missing:

Why do the tag titles not get defended at Wrestlemania? It’s the biggest event of the year and you have two nights. What’s the point of pretending to be a sport of the if a championship isn’t on the line?

That’s like having a midterm election and telling a senator “we aren’t going to put your seat up for competition because we don’t have time.”

Not every UFC Championship is defended on every UFC show.

Not every boxing championship is defended on every boxing card.

There’s nothing about certain WWE championships not being defended on WWE shows that makes WWE look like something other than a real sport.

The reality is that the company doesn’t have the time to feature tag title matches and accomplish everything that it wants to accomplish at Wrestlemania. Yes, there are two nights, but you now also have to work in a women’s division that is significantly more prominent than it was just a few years ago, which creates even less time for the tag division.

Oh yeah, you apparently need two hours worth of ads as well.

Souvik from Kolkata rises from the ashes:

I am obsessed with 90s All Japan Pro Wrestling and how good the main event scene was. I know there was a famous exodus from the company lead by the greatest Mitsuharu Misawa. This created a massive crisis in AJPW where only Toshiaki Kawada remained as the last big name. My question is what are the best matches of AJPW since 2000 in your opinion?

For those of you who don’t know of the crisis that Souvik references, I will give that backstory briefly:

New Japan Pro Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling had been the two largest wrestling promotions in Japan ever since they were both founded in 1972, with NJPW being founded and operated by Antonio Inoki and AJPW being founded and operated by Giant Baba. The two companies ran more or less neck and neck in some pretty intense competition.

Baba died in 1999 at the age of 61 due to complications arising from colon cancer. His widow, Motoko Baba, became majority owner upon his passing, and top in-ring star Mitusharu Misawa was named new president of the company. However, tensions quickly arose between Motoko and Misawa, both over the creative direction of the company and business practices, including how wrestler contracts should be structured. All of this came to a head in the summer of 2000, when Misawa left the promotion and took all but two of the promotion’s native Japanese wrestlers with him, leaving behind just Kawada, as Souvik mentioned, and Masanobu Fuchi. (Taiyo Kea also stayed with AJPW, though many American fans forget he was born in Hawaii and not considered part of the native Japanese group). Perhaps just as important as the wrestlers – if not more so – Misawa also took All Japan’s television deal, as their longtime home NTV would now start airing shows produced by Misawa’s new promotion.

And, of course, that new promotion was Pro Wrestling NOAH, with the name being an obvious allusion to a certain biblical journey.

This certainly put All Japan on its heels and could have killed the company. It managed to survive, though, thanks not only to Kawada and the elevation of Kea but also to an infusion of other talent, like Genichiro Tenryu in 2000, as well as Keiji Muto and Satoshi Kojima in 2002. Loyal gaijin wrestlers like Steve Williams and Stan Hansen also helped bolster the company’s ranks.

In fact, though it has changed ownership and management several times, in the intervening years, All Japan continues to exist to present day.

That wasn’t Souvik’s question, though. His question was about the company’s best matches since the NOAH split occurred.

The first real feud to produce some great bouts post-exodus was between Tenryu and Muto. Though Muto didn’t join the company until 2002 as mentioned above, he actually started wrestling there somewhat regularly in 2001 while under contract to New Japan as part of a cross-promotional arrangement. Tenryu had become the Triple Crown Champion by winning a tournament in October 2000, and he and Muto traded the belt in high quality matches, including on June 8, 2001, April 13, 2002, and October 27, 2002. Also during this period, Tenryu had a really awesome Triple Crown defense against Kojima on July 17, 2002.

In 2004 and 2005, Kawada had a couple of barn burners, including a really good match with Hiroyoshi Tenzan (who was on loan from New Japan) on December 5, 2004 and one against Kojima on February 16, 2005.

By the 2010s, the original tensions between AJPW and NOAH had cooled to the point that the two companies were able to collaborate, which resulted in Jun Akiyama – one of the wrestlers who had left for NOAH in the exodus – coming back for a run in AJPW while still under NOAH contract. On October 23, 2011, Akiyama had an excellent bout with Kohei Suwama (usually just called Suwama) who was perhaps AJPW’s first big homegrown star of the post-NOAH era. Akiyama also had a classic with Takao Omori on February 3, 2012.

The late 2010s saw the rise to prominence of Kento Miyahara, a wrestler originally trained by the legendary Kensuke Sasaki who became a fixture in AJPW. He really kicked it into high gear in 2017 and has been knocking out bangers for the company ever since, including against Suwama in 2017 and KAI in 2019. He also killed it with Yuji Nagata when Nagata visited from New Japan in 2023. However, Miyahara’s greatest opponents have almost certainly been Yuma Aoyagi and Jake Lee. Aoyagi is an All Japan trainee who started in the company around the same time as Miyahara, while Lee is an ethnically Korean wrestler who also has an MMA background. There have been several Aoyagi/Miyahara matches and several Lee/Miyahara matches over the last few years, and basically you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Hopefully that will be enough AJPW goodness to keep you busy for a while.

Tyler from Winnipeg is on a streak . . . of asking questions, that is!

During Goldberg’s rookie winning streak, which five matches were the most impressive?

Following a question about quality AJPW matches with a question about quality Goldberg matches really shows the gamut this column runs . . . though Goldberg did have several All Japan matches come to think of it . . .

To be clear, during that initial run, Goldberg was not in the habit of producing five-star classics, so none of these are great matches in the technical sense. However, Goldie still did some very impressive things that helped him become the phenomenon that he was, so these bouts are more being listed for how memorable they were as opposed to what they might be given on a star rating scale.

In fifth place, I’m going to cheat a bit and list any match in which Goldberg managed to jackhammer the Giant, because there were a few of them and it was always an impressive display of strength. Granted, this is wrestling and Mr. Paul Wight was cooperating in getting himself up and over for the hold, but Goldberg would always hold him aloft for a couple of seconds in a manner that did require genuine raw power.

Coming in at number four, we’ll go with Goldberg successfully defending the WCW World Heavyweight Title against Sting on the September 14, 1998 episode of Monday Nitro. This was one of Goldberg’s longer matches, which showed some growth on his end, but more impressively it was a babyface/babyface match in which both guys were able to play their roles so well that neither one of them even really had to take a subtle heel position in order to make the bout work. That’s an impressive feat.

Third will be Goldberg vs. Raven the night after Slamboree 1998, in which Goldberg became the United States Champion. Because all of Raven’s matches in WCW were no DQ, this allowed for some smoke and mirrors in that Goldberg had to fend off weapons shots, which was unique for his matches, and the closing moments involved awesome visuals of him taking out each and every member of the Flock. Plus, the finish involved a spot that I don’t think I’ve ever seen since, as Raven tried to bail through the audience but several plants pretending to be “fans” grabbed him and threw him back over the barricade as a means of putting over how beloved Goldberg was by the WCW faithful.

If we go to Halloween Havoc 1998, we get what is widely considered to be Goldberg’s best in-ring performance during his undefeated streak, as he defended the WCW Title against Diamond Dallas Page in what, by Goldberg’s standards, may as well have been Flair vs. Steamboat. Unfortunately, a lot of fans missed the match because the show ran long and WCW’s PPV feed cut off, but as a make good the company ran the match for free the next night on Nitro. Now if only we could bring back the concept of time limits on PPV to reign in some of these excessively long AEW shows . . .

And topping the list, I have to go with Goldberg defeating Hulk Hogan for the WCW Title at the Georgia Dome on Nitro. It’s clearly the pinnacle of Goldberg’s career, and anybody who tells you otherwise probably hit their head too hard on the mat after taking a spear from Da Man.

Bryan has been visiting the dispensary again:

Has anyone actually “proven” Steiner math? I mean has anyone in the field of algebra or mathematics or the guy from Good Will Hunting actually tried to solve it to see if those numbers were accurate? That could be very educational

For anybody who does not remember “Steiner math” refers to a Scott Steiner promo from TNA in 2008 which was absurd and became a bit of a meme among online wrestling fans for several years. If you want to read a transcript, you can do so on Genius.

In the promo, Steiner is talking about his odds of beating Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle in a three-way match at the upcoming Sacrifice pay per view. There is no legitimate mathematical analysis to be done, because the whole thing starts off with a totally false premise, as Steiner’s opening comment is that, in a one-on-one match, each wrestler has a 50/50 shot at winning.

This is not true from either a kayfabe or non-kayfabe perspective. For a wrestler to have a 50/50 shot at winning, the result of the match would effectively have to be randomly selected, and we know that’s not the case. In kayfabe terms, the odds aren’t random because wrestling is a contest of skill, so one competitor will almost always have advantages that make one outcome more likely than the other. (This is why betting odds on a legit sporting event are almost never even.) From a non-kayfabe perspective, we know that winners aren’t randomly selected, either, because bookers/creative teams don’t just pull winner names out of a hat.

After that, the rest of Steiner math totally falls apart.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.