Goldberg Recalls the Night He Won the WCW World Title, the Falcons Saving Him From an nWo Beatdown

– During a recent appearance on The Rich Eisen Show last week, WWE Hall of Famer Goldberg recalled the night he won the WCW World Championship from Hulk Hogan in 1998. Goldberg revealed there was an off-air moment that fans didn’t see on TV, where the Atlanta Falcons players saved Goldberg from an nWo beatdown. Goldberg used to play for the Falcons before his wrestling career. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Goldberg on the Atlanta Falcons being at the WCW Nitro when he won the world title: “The night that I wrestled Scott Hall early in the night and then I wrestled Hogan later in the night for the World Heavyweight Championship, the [Atlanta] Falcons, they were there. In the wrestling business, you do a lot of cross-promotion, and these guys are as smart as possible as far as getting the product out there. So I honestly picked up the phone and called every one of my teammates and said ‘Listen, dude. Anyone that wants to come down, let’s do it and have a blast.’ And we concocted a way in, and after I beat Hulk Hogan in front of 45,000 people in Atlanta, at the Georgia Dome where I had played football, we went off the air, Hogan and his minions beat me down, handcuffed me to the ring and spray painted me.”

On the Falcons players coming out to help save him from the off-air beatdown: “And who, lo and behold, comes out to save me is, I don’t know, 20 guys from the Falcons. Whether it’s Jessie Tuggle or Jamal Anderson or Chuck Smith or Cornelius Bennett, for me, I’m just laying in the corner just laughing going ‘These guys have no idea how cool this is to me.’ And equally, it was cooler to them because, for some reason, professional athletes like to live vicariously through us, because we’re theater at the same time. We quite obviously get away with things that they could never get away with it. So that’s part of the allure. For me, it was just the coolest night of my life.”