{"id":33919,"date":"2016-10-23T00:27:10","date_gmt":"2016-10-23T05:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=33919"},"modified":"2016-10-23T00:31:25","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T05:31:25","slug":"mitchells-take-goldberg-wwe-blonde-wig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2016\/10\/23\/mitchells-take-goldberg-wwe-blonde-wig\/","title":{"rendered":"MITCHELL&#8217;S TAKE: Goldberg gave his best, most effective promo of his career without trying to &#8220;entertain&#8221; (and no wig this time)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-2740938918\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p>The biggest irony of Bill Goldberg\u2019s return to a pro wrestling ring Monday night wasn\u2019t that a WCW star was the biggest Superstar on Raw, it was that 12 years later Goldberg was the only one left not wearing a metaphorical blonde wig.<\/p>\n<p>You remember the blonde wig, right? Bill Goldberg was the last great WCW star, a guy who drew eyeballs and money adhering to the strictest winning formula (martial music, march to the ring, lots of sparklers, glower, spear, jackhammer, pin) since Hulk Hogan. Problem was, Vince McMahon thought he created Hulkamania, and knew he hadn\u2019t come up with Who\u2019s Next.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Staff11Mitchell_120.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-400 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Staff11Mitchell_120.jpg\" alt=\"Staff11Mitchell_120\" width=\"120\" height=\"138\" \/><\/a>Add to it that Bill Goldberg started his wrestling career at the top of the business, and, like Brock Lesnar, was a businessman and not a fan. If he had a better contract with more money and fewer dates to work than the rest of the talent, he expected both sides to abide by it anyway. That meant that, like in WCW, he had more than his share of political enemies \u2013 experienced WWE locker room jockeys who knew how to whisper in McMahon\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n<p>Goldberg got tasered out of his winning gimmick in WCW, and it was easy to convince McMahon, who didn\u2019t get it anyway, that Goldberg\u2019s formula had to be changed in the bigger, better WWE, and that this entitled, overpaid, underworked dilettante needed to have his punk card tested, first thing.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why, on Goldberg\u2019s first-ever Raw appearance, the androgynous Golddust (I forget whether he was stuttering at the time) popped up to give him a blonde wig.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Goldberg had to put it on.<\/p>\n<p>See, it wasn\u2019t enough that Bill Goldberg was a proven money draw, doing exactly what it was he knew how to do. He needed to learn how to be like all the rest, how to wrestle a WWE style 20-minute main event, how to play light comedy with a human Oscar statuette, and bow his head.<\/p>\n<p>I had my biggest audio argument ever with editor\/publisher Wade Keller about this idiocy. Talent and management adjust to money, money doesn\u2019t just adjust to talent and management, simply because one is rarer than the other two and, you know, money.<\/p><div id=\"pwtor-2050096227\" class=\"pwtor-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>Bill Goldberg didn\u2019t have a successful stay in WWE, and WWE didn\u2019t get their money\u2019s worth out of their orphan attraction. That blonde wig became a symbol of what went wrong between the two parties. Either Vince McMahon was too mule-headed to just make the money, or Goldberg was too stubborn to adjust to a new landscape and evolve into a modern money performer.<\/p>\n<p>Twelve years later, Bill Goldberg gave the best, most effective promo of his career at the end of Raw. Ryback got the hell out just in time. It worked precisely because he was simply himself, performing his version of what he understood to be his best chance to draw money \u2013 playing superhero in a Universe that forgot how to create them. There was no blonde wig on his bald wig, meant to conform him to the modern light-comedy WWE ideal.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t speak in that stilted Universe talk, taking it to new level, looking to change the game. He\u2019d probably never even heard any of it and, like most foreign languages, if you don\u2019t hear it all the time, it\u2019s hard to speak. Instead, he spoke from the heart about what it meant to have the fans \u2013 not the universe \u2013 and his wife and son see him in the ring after all these years away. He then addressed, not a brand or an authority figure or a wrestling style, but his bad-ass opponent and that fat loudmouth stooge of his.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Goldberg and, truthfully, that stooge were bald before the world, and that blonde wig was now on the heads of the rest of the male roster. One championship wrestler was live on Facebook, too busy entertaining to care about losing his match. Another main-eventer was so far into modern WWE comedy that he just showed slides of his real-life family, no jokes even attempted.<\/p>\n<p>Appropriately enough, Goldust was still there to lead his team of minstrels against another. The Universe Champion continues to childishly bicker with, not his boyfriend, but his \u201cbest friend\u201d (they\u2019re clearly asexual) and it\u2019s their touch of whimsy that keeps them eating up the airtime.<\/p>\n<p>Soon enough, Goldberg\u2019s stolen moment will have faded in the face of WWE\u2019s slowly fading brand of light entertainment. It\u2019s worth marking the moment, though, where he proved his point once and for all, in Vince McMahon\u2019s own ring and with blonde wigs everywhere he looked.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Bruce Mitchell has been a PWTorch columnist since 1990. He hosts the PWTorch Livecast every Friday night at 7 ET with Travis Bryant at www.PWTorchLivecast.com. The weekly two-hour Bruce Mitchell Audio Show with host Wade Keller is a VIP audio staple for years and is part of over a dozen VIP exclusive audio shows that run usually daily or weekly that online members have access to with their VIP password. Follow Bruce on Twitter: @mitchellpwtorch.)<\/em> ###<\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-2744246136\"><div id=\"pwtor-1108635513\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>The biggest irony of Bill Goldberg\u2019s return to a pro wrestling ring Monday night wasn\u2019t that a WCW star was the biggest Superstar on Raw, it was that 12 years later Goldberg was the only <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2016\/10\/23\/mitchells-take-goldberg-wwe-blonde-wig\/\" title=\"MITCHELL&#8217;S TAKE: Goldberg gave his best, most effective promo of his career without trying to &#8220;entertain&#8221; (and no wig this time)\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,52,60,53],"tags":[226,1639],"class_list":["post-33919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlightarticles","category-opnionandanalysis","category-takes_mitchell","category-opinion_stafftakes","tag-goldberg","tag-goldust"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2016\/10\/GoldbergMike_Lano_3x2_600.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33922,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33919\/revisions\/33922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}