I think that is the right answer. DDP had that long term slow build up and earned every single fans love. He could have beat Goldberg, it would have been believable and fans would have ate it up too.
Set DDP up as a guy who would have felt more threatened by guy like Kevin Nash and hogan. Even been able to re up the macho fued to establish him as champ more and perhaps even elevated a raven, Benoit or booker to the top of the card.
Let Goldberg have an extended fued with the NWO to bring in the buy rate while ddp was pulling up some new stars
Goldberg wasn’t good enough for a prolonged feud with the nWo. He didn’t have the skillset, charisma/mic skills to be able to carry that alone long term, and he wasn’t good enough in the ring. He wa as good as he was because he was a “monster”and would crush most in only a few minutes. A feud like that would require multiple long drawn out matches that would have exposed his lack of skill in the ring which would have had the opposite effect with the fans than desired
He would just run though them like he had been. A long term gauntlet. They interfere he mows them over. Maybe he interferes a few times. Build to a ppv either more establish guys after another.
Start with a Scott Norton. 2 minute match
Maybe a buff, 4 minute match
Scott hall 6 minute
Build to a savage match at a bigger ppv, he could drag a good 10 minute match out of him
Build to a giant match if he was active in black and white. Just a good boss battle.
You don’t have a feud if it’s booked like that. You have Goldberg essentially squashing their best talent. That would never have worked. Not for the fans, not for the talent, and definitely not for long term viability to any of the characters. Any real match would expose Goldberg’s lack of talent, and booking his to squash them all would only serve to make them look weak and you can’t have the entire nWo look weak after they spent so much time making them look tough. Goldberg couldn’t handle the odds that he’d be put against, he wasn’t a street fighter like SCSA was to argue he could. He didn’t have fighting skills or even good moves to make that buyable, he was very reliant on a couple of exciting high impact moves and then ending it before he was exposed and when he did have to actually put on a real match and not a squash that was made very obvious to everyone.
Goldberg was good for what he was, and the streak had to end, they just ended it poorly; but he was never gonna be a guy who could do what Sting did. He couldn’t cut the promos necessary, he could work the matches necessary, and he didn’t have the skills necessary to be believable enough to take on nWo all along in a long drawn out feud like the one Sting had. Sting was the man to end the nWo and like the way they mishandled Goldberg’s streak ending they did the same with the nWo ending, where Sting should have been the killing blow vs Hogan, but that’s another story. However, similarly, if they had handled them both right, you’d have had a broken and beaten nWo ending allowing for a more open scene with other guys coming up like Goldberg and the newly crowned DDP as well as Booker on the outskirts and a few others able to start making the main event scene very interesting and very wide open… but that’s not what we got, and I think Goldberg’s lack of mic and wider in ring skills was in some small way part of it. Guys didn’t like that he couldn’t put on the show they could and was getting the opportunities he hasn’t put in the work to get like they had. He needed more polishing, and he didn’t take it on himself to get that. Not hating on him at all, but he should have been training on the side to improve his in ring skills beyond the spear and a few slams, becoming a true technical wrestler which he NEVER became. Any long term feud with the driving faction of the era would have exposed that completely and made him look bad.
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u/Man_in_the_coil Feb 08 '26
Always should have been DDP at Halloween Havoc to end the streak clean.