Goldberg & Chris Jericho Discuss Backstage Fight
WWE Hall of Famer Goldberg and AEW star Chris Jericho have discussed their infamous backstage brawl with Goldberg admitting Jericho “kicked his ass.”
Back in the days of WCW, Chris Jericho set his sights on a feud with Goldberg, mocking the star and impersonating his famous security-flanked entrance. Jericho went as far as to put his WCW Television Title on the line against a person impersonating Goldberg at 1998’s Fall Brawl as he sought to build a feud that would build to a real pay-per-view match between the two men.
That bout never happened as wrestling folklore has it that Goldberg didn’t see Jericho as a worthy opponent for the main event star.
Within the year, Chris Jericho was in WWE but in 2003, when Goldberg joined the company, the bad blood between the two men was quick to resurface.
Chris Jericho previously detailed the events that led to their fight in his book Undisputed: How to Become World Champ in 1,372 Easy Steps:
“It was Goldfinch’s first Raw, and I worked with HHH vs. Shawn and Booker T. After the match, I was pulled aside and informed that Goldsmith had spent the entire match barking to Nash about how I didn’t know how to sell properly and how I hadn’t wanted to do business with him in WCW.”
“It made me mad that he had only been with the company for a little over a week, and he was already up to his old tricks. It was time to put a stop to it right now. I marched straight into the dressing room and saw Nash sitting in the corner like a giant praying mantis acting like he owned the place, while Billy Boy sat across from him with a self-indulgent smile on his face. Throwing caution to the wind, I stood in front of him and stared directly into his eyes.”
“‘I heard you were saying some stuff about me during my match. I don’t know if you realize it, but things have changed. This isn’t WCW. If you have something to say to me, say it to my face.’”
Jericho went on to detail how Goldberg charged him but that he was able to lock in a front face lock on the former WCW World Champion, coming out on top of the fracas. It is interesting to note that other WWE stars and agents broke up the fight while Jericho explains that Kevin Nash stayed still to watch events.
Now appearing on Talk Is Jericho, Goldberg and Chris Jericho have discussed the ugly incident and both men seem to agree that other people set the wheels in motion for them to clash with Jericho saying:
“Well, I mean once again, I firmly believe that you know, we had our backstage you know, brew ha ha scuffle backstage. That was manipulated, I think, by other people to kind of pit [us] against each other.”
Goldberg then added:
“100% You know, things in life happened for a reason. And I believe that one was because of the true animosity you and I had for each other. It was a stage that was set by other people. And we just followed out the storyline. You know, I will apologise to the end of my days for that.”
The former WWE Universal Champion then happily admitted that Chris Jericho had got the better of him:
“Oh my god. Yeah, you kicked my ass. Pretty good, man.”
Chris Jericho then joked about stretching Goldberg and recalled how their fight had spilled out of the locker room into the view of fans:
“Oh, yeah, I stretched you. Yeah, that’s not exactly what happened. But I’ll take it. Hey, man, I do remember too we fought out the doors in Milwaukee into the concourse for a second. We actually bought it out of the dressing room back into the dressing room. I was like there’s other people seeing this?”
While that fight took place, one match that fans never got to see was between Goldberg and Stone Cold Steve Austin, and during the conversation, Goldberg explained why.