Goldberg Makes A Better WrestleMania 36 Opponent For Roman Reigns Than The Fiend

This past week on Friday Night SmackDown, the always troubling combination of Goldberg and comedy took form when the otherwise no-nonsense legendary WCW legend sternly challenged The Fiend to a match at Saudi Arabia’s Super ShowDown. The challenge went down during a pre-taped segment where Goldberg was made to interact with the admittedly ambitious Firefly Fun House News.

And while anything can happen in WWE, Goldberg will find himself as a rare significant underdog by bell time on February 27 with WWE continuing to promote The Fiend as an unstoppable monster.

Reading the tea leaves also suggests Goldberg will not regain the WWE Universal Championship come Super ShowDown as plans have reportedly called for Roman Reigns to challenge The Fiend at WrestleMania 36. This was one of the first, and for a while the only match rumored for the card, which has been deliberately kept under wraps by the worldwide leader.

Reigns, who was advertised in a leaked promo for the Elimination Chamber main event on March 8, is already doing his part to further tensions between himself and Bray Wyatt’s creation.

Speaking with members of the media during Tuesday’s WrestleMania 37 press conference in Inglewood, Calif., Reigns had the following to say on whom he would prefer to wrestle at WWE’s biggest show:

 “I would much rather face The Fiend. He's busted his ass all year long for it. No offense to Goldberg, I think he's a great performer. He's a great Superstar, but I'm into the future right now and helping out the guys who can be in the locker room with me, and there's no doubt that The Fiend has put a lot of work into what he's done—but as we all have. So, like I said, it's my time now. We've h ad fun with that Fun House, but it's time to bring it home."

Always the locker room leader, Roman Reigns was saying all the right things about his potential WrestleMania opponent this past Tuesday, demonstrating his obvious (and understandable) bias toward a hard-working full-time performer over a part-time star like Goldberg.

But in Goldberg, WWE has a rare performer who can singlehandedly make a difference both in television ratings and at the box office. Viewership for SmackDown was up 5.16% with Goldberg’s advertised appearance. Goldberg appeared at the top of the second hour, which drew 2.539 million viewers, up from 2.318 million during the second hour last week. For WWE to have The Fiend defend his Universal Championship against Reigns is one thing.

To sacrifice Goldberg in the process is borderline reckless.

The company line in scenarios like this is that Goldberg losing to The Fiend is a necessary evil en route to making The Fiend a bigger star.

Now, The Fiend will get “the rub!”

Unfortunately, the years of data have disproved that entire concept. Since Brock Lesnar’s return in 2012, Seth Rollins is the only WWE Superstar to defeat Lesnar on two separate occasions, both as a babyface. In time, Rollins wore out his welcome as a babyface and now does what he can as a top heel on Monday nights, where viewership continues to sink.

Viewership only continued to crater following Roman Reigns’ win over Triple H at WrestleMania 32, his subsequent win over The Undertaker at WrestleMania 33, amid The Fiend’s countless attacks on WWE Hall of Famers and even following Becky Lynch’s win over Ronda Rousey in last year’s WrestleMania main event.

None of these elusive victories were able to turn around WWE’s yearslong decline, or for that matter its ongoing stock implosion. Instead, “the rub,” a suddenly overrated concept within WWE’s proverbial hamster wheel, continues to be lost in translation.

WWE has created a monster that it may not be able to stop for years, and ironically it has nothing to do with The Fiend. That monster is part-time performers, who have been represented in the last eight WrestleMania main events and whom WWE has trained its audience to prioritize over its full-time roster.

Sure, WWE can valiantly try to reverse its own self-fulfilling prophecy, but at this point, if a major star like Goldberg has only so many years left in the peak physical condition he remains in at age 53, it’s fair to question whether or not WWE should simply double down its affliction for part-timers. A Battle of The Spear between two similarly hard-hitting athletes creates way more mainstream appeal—and a far easier story to tell—than Reigns going back-and-forth with The Firefly Fun House.

Until further notice, whether or not Reigns faces Goldberg or The Fiend at WrestleMania will have zero effect in reversing WWE’s downward spiral in viewership. Television ratings, WWE Network subscriptions, WWE’s share price and other key performance indicators will continue to suffer under WWE’s current model of over-staffing and micromanagement.

With all else equal in a company that has shown no signs of growth in Vince McMahon’s winter years, WWE aught to consider going with the program that creates a true WrestleMania dream match between Roman Reigns and Goldberg.