Goldberg thinks his heel turn could have been as impactful as John Cena‘s but he refused.
The 16-time WWE Champion turned heel at Elimination Chamber. On Raw this week he explained the reasons behind it with one of the most explosive promos in years.
Goldberg did turn heel briefly in 2000 during a tumultuous time in WCW, but that quickly proved to be a mistake and he turned back face with little pushback.
Speaking with The Ariel Helwani Show, Goldberg talked about John Cena’s heel turn and how it compared to a potential Goldberg heel turn in his prime.
He compared Cena’s heel turn to Hulk Hogan in 1996 and thinks Goldberg could have been just as big of a heel if he had done the same. However, he explained that he didn’t want to let down the Make-A-Wish Kids, something John Cena also knows a lot about.
Goldberg On John Cena’s Heel Turn
“I think Cena’s turn is most comparable to Hogan turning. Yeah, I could have done the same thing, but I refused to. That was when I didn’t know the business, but to me, it meant more for the Make-A-Wish kid that was in my dressing room the night I was wrestling Hacksaw Jim Duggan,” Goldberg said.
“He was coming back from some kind of surgery, and I turned heel that night. They wanted me to do the thing, and for the business, it would have been freaking unparalleled—like what these guys are doing with Cena, I believe.”
“I was the Make-A-Wish dude before Cena was doing his thing in WWE. That was kind of me in WCW. I was the antithesis of what people thought outside the ring—or at least I could be. I’ll rip your face off in the ring, but then when I get out of the ring, you give me your baby, and I’ll hold them up, smile, and give them a moment of their lifetime if that’s what they want.”
Goldberg continued, “I think Cena’s turn is freaking fabulous, no question about it. I don’t know how it all transpired week after week, but I know how it happened, and bravo to all of them. And bravo to John—he’s smart enough to understand how monumental it would be. At the time when they wanted me to do it, I wasn’t smart enough. But as I said, it meant more to me for one little girl to have a smile on her face than for me to come back and see her in tears—which is what would have happened. I don’t know, call me a mush for kids, man.”
Goldberg Explains The Negatives To Turning Heel
Continuing, Goldberg explained how turning heel negatively affected his character and why he never wanted to be a heel in his career again.
“Being a heel gives you the ability to get your ass kicked and not be that superhuman guy, right? There were a number of negatives to my character, and that was one of them—in that respect, it was one-dimensional. You can only be that good guy for so long, in my opinion.”
“I had such a bad experience with it when it happened that I didn’t want to go back to it. I didn’t understand the business enough at the time—or honestly, care about it enough in retrospect. And, to be fair, nobody really asked me to do it again. It was never really an option. I think I would have said yes wholeheartedly, but I don’t think it ever really came up again.”
