The man who once had a 173 match win streak in WCW, Goldberg, lost at WrestleMania 33 to Brock Lesnar and lost his Universal Championship. They did a good job of making him look as invincible as he did in his halcyon days, but there is one record in his career that has finally been broken.
Goldberg’s defeat to Brock Lesnar was his first ever clean loss in almost twenty years as a professional wrestler.
The closest the streak came to being broken before WrestleMania 33 was in a Triple Threat match at Armageddon 2003 between Goldberg, Triple H, and Kane. WWE quite contentiously claim that it was a clean loss, which doesn’t seem true at all; outside interference from Evolution played a part in the outcome, so it can’t really be defined as “clean”.
The list of wrestlers who beat Goldberg in the video above includes Scott Steiner, Kevin Nash, Bret Hart (three times in a row), and Booker T. However, all of them involved outside interference, with the most famous example being Nash and the infamous cattle prod from Scott Hall.
According to profightdb.com, Goldberg’s overall match record is nothing to be sniffed at, either. With 295 matches in total under his belt, Goldberg won 248 of them, drawing 7 and losing just 30, all of which weren’t clean. That’s crazy, no matter how you look at it.
His win percentage is 84.07%. By comparison, Lesnar’s is 71.92%. To compare it to two WWE “invincibles” just shows how remarkable it really is. Hogan’s most famous run in WWF, where he would often prefer to die rather than lose, gave him a 79% win percentage. Elsewhere, Super Cena has a 76.70% percentage, though he has worked almost four times as many matches as Goldberg.
Interestingly, only five other wrestlers have better records than Goldberg, a list which includes the likes of The Ultimate Warrior, Mil Mascaras, and, quite unexpectedly, NXT’s undefeated Women’s Champion Asuka.
One record still stands: he’s never tapped out. He lost to a Steiner submission, but it went down as TKO as he passed out instead of tapping.
No matter what you think of Goldberg, the fact that it’s taken this long for him to lose cleanly is nothing short of astounding. They will never again be able to push someone as the unstoppable machine that he once was and showed glimpses of becoming again during his brief WWE return.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
