Tony Schiavone On WCW Having No Idea What To Do With Goldberg

What Happened When Mondays is a great podcast from the MLW Radio Network that features Tony Schiavone and co-host Conrad Thompson covering a single topic extensively from the Jim Crockett and WCW days. On their premiere broadcast they covered all things Goldberg, if you would like to read our full recap, you can find it here.

Hugh Morris was Goldberg’s first televised victim on September 22nd, 1997. The encounter lasted just over two minutes and Bill suffered a black eye during the match.

Tony Schiavone says that he knew at the time that Goldberg had incredible ability, but he had no idea if they had serious plans for him. When it came time to debut Goldberg on television in Salt Lake City, Schiavone says that he will never forget it because “that was one of the biggest clusterf**** that I ever announced in my life.”

Tony says that there was a plan to put Goldberg on TV, but no plan on what they were going to do with him. Schiavone says the WCW booking committee didn’t even know what they were going to call Goldberg on television, even up to the live broadcast.

Tony says they either didn’t know how they were going to use him, or “they didn’t know what the f** they were doing.” Schiavone says this is the reason he neglected to say Goldberg’s name for most of the match because he didn’t know what they were going to even call him.

Tony asked Eric Bischoff in his headset numerous times what he was supposed to call Bill Goldberg, and he received no response. Finally Eric replied something akin with, “I don’t know, just call him Goldberg.”

Schiavone says the fact that Bill looked a little bit like Steve Austin was purely coincidental. He says that Goldberg looked and acted like a shoot fighter with his gloves and move-set, but they didn’t bring it up on the air because they didn’t care about shoot fighting. Tony also says there were no directives from management to not mention shoot fighting, but it was never even a consideration.