Wrestlers sabotaging matches

[Surf Digby]

Regal didn't go out to deliberately make Goldberg look bad. His thought progress - misguided as it may have been - was to show that Goldberg could out-wrestle him, showing another string to his bow, hence things like that lovely rolling leg lock.

Unfortunately that type of match was outside of Goldberg's comfort zone and he ended up flapping about like a fish and the desired effect was not achieved.

[chokeout]

Unless there's more than one Malenko / Brookside match then the stories of Brookside trying to school Malenko is rubbish. It's a typical match with a bit of chain wrestling that goes tits up at the end with a botched pin and Malenko seeing his arse and putting his own finisher on wrong. Nothing more to it that that. 

[NoUseforaUsername]

I'm pretty sure I remember reading that Shawn Michaels threw a massive hissy fit during one of the ladder matches with Razor Ramon because a couple of spots were blown, and he blamed Razor Ramon for it, despite it not being his fault.

I thought it was very low of Ric Flair to make his "Shawn had that match with a ladder" comment in his book, too.

I kind of agreed with his "Mick Foley is a stuntman" comment, but, again, I can see how one would find that disrespectful and uncalled for.

The Shawn comment in particular just smacked of Ric sucking up to Shawn and HHH because of their backstage power.

[Truth]

About the Regal / Goldberg match: Regal tries to give Goldberg openings to counter holds, British style, but Goldberg has no clue about holds/counter holds. Did Goldberg look bad? Yes, he looks absolutely clueless. Was it Regal's fault? Maybe. Regal could make a broomstick look good, but this time his opponent was a broomstick that lacked the broom. Goldberg was great at doing his couple of power moves and displaying one or two cool holds, but other than that he was extremely limited, something WCW could hide unless they wanted him to "work" or "wrestle".

About the Brookside / Malenko match: This was an excellent 4-minute match. The match looks great every time I see it except for the execution of the cloverleaf. Malenko has no reason to be annoyed. Maybe he was annoyed, but who could tell? Malenko had one face expression. How could anyone tell if he was happy, angry, annoyed or had any other feelings?

[BomberPat]

One thing I'll say about the Goldberg/Regal match is that, if I remember correctly (it's been years since I watched it), the announcers actually do a really good job of covering for it - they talk about how Regal is a whole different style to what Goldberg's been used to, and that he's a challenging opponent because of that. So it does sound like either Regal had an idea of how the match should go, that Goldberg was too green to play his part adequately, or if Regal did try and sabotage the match, the commentary team managed to frame it in such a way that it still makes Goldberg look like he came out on top.

So I'd lean towards Truth's explanation of the match, though with the caveat that Regal was a total mess at the time, so may have been a little from column A, a little from column B.

[NoUseforaUsername]

My recollections of watching it were that Regal dominated the match, which was odd in itself, and that he barely sold Goldberg's offense. It looked like they were both on completely different wavelengths in terms of how they were trying to work the match.

Maybe it's just a case of Regal's selling not being the strongest, because I always thought he was uncoordinated and awkward when taking offense.

I remember reading somewhere that Regal had taken umbrage at Goldberg's push and "greenness" and that was what led to what happened.

If we are to take Regal at face value that he was genuinely trying to teach Goldberg how to chain wrestle or wrestle a more European style, then his expectations of Goldberg's ability to learn a complete new style of wrestling on the fly with less than two years of wrestling training is suspiciously unreasonable.

Perry Saturn and Raven managed to have matches of a similar length with Goldberg that played up to his strengths.

This was completely the other way. And Regal was told to do the opposite and make him look good.

 

 

[unfitfinlay]

Regal spoke about it on Austin's podcast

He was told to have a competitive match but Goldberg froze so he was just trying to walk him through things.

I can believe him too. Especially the part about the agent. If WCW's agents were switching finishes and even telling Champions to drop their titles without authorisation then "go six minutes and be competitive" must've felt like fuck all in comparison.

[NoUseforaUsername]

Goldberg maintained that Regal was shooting on him as of 2016, and when asked about it, Regal said Goldberg never discussed it with him when he came back near Survivor Series time.

It essentially comes down to who is more believable.

Goldberg or someone who, no offense to Regal, was let go by WCW and WWE for alcohol and drug addiction, was nutting people at Christmas parties and urinating on stewardesses in airplanes during this timeframe.

I'm willing to believe there is a good reason why Goldberg is still annoyed about it to this day.

 

[Truth]

If Goldberg maintains that Regal was "shooting", he is still as clueless as he was back then! If Regal had decided to shoot, he could easily have done that but he tried to "work". I re-watched the match to refresh my memory. If anything, Goldberg is the one who is "shooting", being stiff as f*ck, clumsy and going against the flow, making it difficult for Regal to actually work and put on holds. Goldberg was lucky to be put in a spot where he could win, win and win. Yes, it worked... WCW actually made it work.

The one who should take the blame for this match was the booker who did not realise that a *competitive* match with Regal and Goldberg would be a complete styles clash.

Stop bringing this match up as a "shoot"! It was not a shoot, it was a match between two wrestlers whose styles did match up very badly.

[garynysmon]

On 11/6/2017 at 1:23 AM, NoUseforaUsername said:

I thought it was very low of Ric Flair to make his "Shawn had that match with a ladder" comment in his book, too.

I don't know if its still the case, but Flair had a ridiculously big hard-on for Triple H and Shawn Michaels at one point.

That mammoth shoot interview he did was nothing but "Hunter and Shawn" for a good two hours. Tiresome beyond belief.

[unfitfinlay]

16 hours ago, NoUseforaUsername said:

Goldberg maintained that Regal was shooting on him as of 2016, and when asked about it, Regal said Goldberg never discussed it with him when he came back near Survivor Series time.

It essentially comes down to who is more believable.

Goldberg or someone who, no offense to Regal, was let go by WCW and WWE for alcohol and drug addiction, was nutting people at Christmas parties and urinating on stewardesses in airplanes during this timeframe.

I'm willing to believe there is a good reason why Goldberg is still annoyed about it to this day.

 

Regal, for me.

I honestly don't understand why he'd lie about it. He's open about everything else he did when he was fucked up and has the ready made excuse of "I was completely off my tits". He's hardly known for his ego either. Besides, it's not even as if the story is really discussed in a way that makes Regal look bad. It's always told in a "Fuck Goldberg. He never paid his dues" kind of way.

Goldberg, on the other hand, takes himself very seriously. He famously refused to have anything to do with Jericho, because of his size, even though Jericho had done a great job of building up interest in a match between the two of them. I can believe that he *thinks* Regal was trying to make him look bad. I just don't think that was Regal's intention.

[BomberPat]

At one of Regal's "Audience With A Wrestling Villain" shows, Regal was asked a question about "beating up Bill Goldberg", and he replied with, "firstly, I didn't beat up Bill Goldberg. Note I said didn't, not couldn't", which is probably the closest thing to ego I've ever heard from the man, and suggests that he's not exactly on the best of terms with Bill.

Apparently Regal discussed it when he was on Stone Cold's Podcast, did anyone listen to that?

[Guest]

It was an agent's fault. The instructions were to go out and have a 5-odd minute competitive match, which would've been Goldberg's first of that kind. Goldberg was ill-prepared to have that kind of match, and possibly received a totally different instruction, which wouldn't be surprising given what a mess WCW was in the back as opposed to WWE.

Regal says he took the flack for it backstage as people were wondering what went on there, as he looked directly at the agent who was twiddling his thumbs instead of owning up to it, Regal decided not to rat him out. Goldberg is great at what he does, but even to this day is pretty green to the business, which is probably why he still holds that against Regal and thinks he was out there purely to show him up.

Goldberg does seem like a decent guy in interviews but certainly takes himself too seriously. I remember he did an angry tweet when Gillberg made an appearance during a Jericho/Owens segment last year. Like why would that bother you in 2017? Even in 1999 he should really be able to laugh that off

[UK Kat Von D]

Personally I blame the ref, he was bang out of order and it is totally his fault. Not sure why, but everyone else possible has taken the blame so far so thought I'd even it out a bit 

[NoUseforaUsername]

I never understood why Jericho held such hard feelings towards Goldberg over that.

Goldberg had contracted time off during that period which would have precluded him working a program with Jericho.

He also had the cachet, if not the creative control, to agree to working with him.

Put yourself in Goldberg's shoes. Savage, Hogan, Flair and Sting weren't working with Jericho; Jericho was firmly in the midcard and had no experience working with bonafide main event talent, so why would Goldberg be enamoured with his creative pitch?

It's alright for Jericho to say it was a win win situation for all parties, but Goldberg clearly didn't feel that way. It's not like Jericho pitched this purely to put over Goldberg out of the goodness of his heart, he was doing it to try and leverage his own position in the company.

Goldberg gets put down as a narcissist and a mark for his own character, but having read about the events that led to the backstage confrontation in 2003, it's Jericho who looks petty. Kevin Nash played Jericho and worked him up to confront Goldberg because he's so sensitive about what people (Goldberg) say and think about him.

Take into account that this (Jericho) is the same person who rubbed everyone up the wrong way when he first arrived in WWE and had such a lack of self-awareness that he had to apologize to Undertaker, of all people, for disrespecting him weeks into his tenure.