-- Former WWE Univeral champion Goldberg talked about his most recent tenure in WWE, as well as the situation surrounding WrestleMania, the taping schedule as well as Roman Reigns pulling out. Here are some key highlights:
On WWE's taping schedule leading into WrestleMania 36
"It was the strangest week or two weeks of my life. I don’t even know where to begin. There are very few live events being produced in this last month. You know, when you leave the city that I’m in right now if you go outside of 100 mile radius, you have to quarantine for two weeks. So I go to Orlando, I tape, I come back back here and quarantine. I go back to Orlando, I tape, I come back here and quarantine. It’s just been like Groundhog Day. "
On his WrestleMania match getting changed and ongoing uncertainty
“You know, obviously, I had a change of opponents at the very last moment. You know, Roman Reigns - everybody knows he has leukemia. You know, he’s in remission and his, obviously his immune system is down. I don’t know why it was even considered in the beginning, except for the fact that we’d invested time and WWE invested the money in the angle, in the match, you know. So literally til the 23rd hour, it was still a possibility that he and I were going to wrestle. So plans kind of changed at the very last minute. I did the match with Braun and it was possible that I could wrestle Roman again...before the fifth. That obviously fell through. The mental and the physical...you’ve seen me go through this stuff. Can you imagine me being done on Friday. My obligations were complete for the year. My second match was already wrestled so I was literally done. So I come back here on Friday and jump on the tractor and eat as many Bon Bons and Uncrustables and Coke, drink as many Cokes and don’t go the gym for five days. And then I get a phone call in the middle of the week that it’s still a possibility. Whether it was physical strain or mental strain, it's been a very interesting two weeks."
On why WWE kept promoting Goldberg vs. Reigns until the last minute
“Because it was still a possibility on his end that he could go through with the match. We went to the training facility in Orlando, our temperatures were taken when we walked in, the place was you know, scrubbed up and down, there were a very limited amount of people in and out of the building. It was very controlled, I mean it was as... I think what happened was, somebody was sick and Roman heard about it. They didn’t have...they just had the flu. But just the fact that someone was sick in those circumstances, at the end of the day he just couldn’t do it. You know, more power for him to continually want to get it done. Whether that’s realistic or unrealistic from a person in his shoes are concerned. But you’ve gotta love the guy because up to the 11th hour, he was still willing to do it. At the end of the day, it's Roman's decision and whatever he decided, everyone had to go with because none of us are in his shoes and he's the one that has to experience it."
On how it affected his match at WrestleMania
"I'd never wrestled Braun before and we had no story. There was no lead up to it whatsoever. It was a reality check. This was a time where everybody knows Roman's situation so it's not a fabricated story, it's reality. So reality was literally playing out in front of everybody's eyes, Braun and I included. He had no clue that he was going to be doing that match nor did I. But in this business, you gotta learn to roll with the punches, you gotta satiate everyone and you gotta look at the big picture. You gotta take everything into consideration at the same time. You can't risk injury or whatever it is. We just had to do our jobs, no matter how unprepared we were for it. These guys wrestle a number of times a week, I wrestled two times a year, so it's a little different story for me. For them, it's old hat. It's just what they do."
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