Goldberg is retired from WWE. Unless he isn’t.
At 55 years old and with a shoulder that will likely require surgery at some point, the former four-time world champion may have wrestled for the last time in WWE when he was submitted by Roman Reigns at Elimination Chamber earlier this year. That bout fulfilled the number of matches stipulated under his current WWE deal, but as he recently told Joseph Staszewski of The New York Post, he’s still under contract with the company and could be summoned again.
“I’m still waiting for that one [call] to happen one of these days,” Goldberg said to the Post. “But I suppose you never retire in the wrestling world until you’re dead, so who knows.”
Whether he’ll actually get the call is a subject up for some debate. Even in his prime, Goldberg was more of an attraction due to his pure power and athleticism than his in-ring craftsmanship, and his matches in his later WWE career have occasionally been forgettable. One in particular, his loss to The Undertaker at WWE Super Showdown 2019, was widely panned by spectators at the time.
Part of that could be due to the condition of his shoulder, which he told Staszewski was “so bad that he couldn’t pick up a five-pound weight.” Goldberg also noted that he was given just a few weeks’ notice to train before facing Reigns, and would be better if he had more advance notice.
That may not be possible, since any scenario that sees Goldberg back in a WWE ring is likely to be one similar to the most recent return of Brock Lesnar, where a host of injuries to other superstars led to his insertion into the championship picture leading up to SummerSlam. Regardless, Goldberg’s fans should take heart in the idea that he may not have wrestled his last match just yet, and that he could still go out on a good note before finally calling it a career.