Joseph and Colette Discuss Goldberg vs. Diamond Dallas Page
After giving DDP/Goldberg five stars, how high up the BIG EGG MASTERLIST can Colette convince Joseph to go?
Here at the end of our four match World Championship Wrestling retrospective, I've finally figured out the throughline that runs from the Hollywood Blondes to WarGames '94 to the Rey Mysterio Jr. and the Cruiserweight Division to Goldberg and Diamond Dallas Page: their success could have only happened in, and in spite of, the company that promoted them.
I pitched WCW to Joseph shortly after Ted Turner's death, this deeply southern dude whose great sin, at least in the eyes of Vince McMahon, was that he liked wrasslin'. He also loved movies and cartoons and buffalo meat and owning a bunch of shit (probably more than he liked the stuff he owned, if I had to guess), and while I'm sure he made a lot of mistakes when it came to stewarding all of these things, investing in a professional wrestling outfit out of loyalty to a kind of programming that mattered to the early days of TBS was, to me, his most beautiful.
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Jim Crockett Promotions probably would have died without TBS buying a majority stake in the company in November 1988, and given how things wound up going for the World Wrestling Federation in the mid-1990s, wrestling in general would have probably followed suit. WCW was a blip in Turner's life — for all of his competitor's obsession with crushing him, McMahon and wrestling don't turn up much in his reckoning of things — akin, perhaps, to something like the Williams Street animation studio that gave us Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Adult Swim. He'd bought all of these toys and let people cook up new stuff with them.
Most of the people who held the reigns in WCW were pretty stupid, even the successful ones, and with the exception the brief span of time in which WCW was actually a profitable portion of the Turner empire, its existence stands in defiance of oft-cited maxims like "wrestling is a cheap thing to fill airtime with" — there was nothing cheap about it. But the constant churn of wrestlers and creative led to characters and ideas that would have happened nowhere else.
The Hollywood Blondes were put together out of spite and succeeded because Steve Austin and Brian Pillman were undeniable. Dusty Rhodes and Dustin Rhodes' saga against the Studd Stable is so emotionally gutwrenching because of the company's southern roots, its fanbase's long memory for things like blood feuds and title histories. The cruiserweight division took hold as Nitro expanded to two hours, putting Turner's unlimited checkbook to the noble task of exposing hillbillies and weird little eight year olds from Detroit, Michigan to lucha libre. And DDP and Goldberg are, more than anything else, proof that if you give a wrestling company time and space, lightning might strike at any moment. Maybe even twice. Maybe in the same moment.
WCW fucking rules, and if you don't agree you've got more rocks in your head than Bobby the Stain, to quote Mongo McMichael. But does it rule the BIG EGG MASTERLIST? Let's find out.
Colette Arrand
WHO'S NEXT: THE LION ROARS! The EGG takes on matches from one of the greatest promotions of all time through the lens of four of its most well-known aces. It's New Japan Ace month covering the work of Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Shinya Hashimoto, and Hiroshi Tanahashi!
Colette Arrand
Joseph, every time I post about Goldberg on the internet, people have the gall to repeat the same horseshit about him that’s been the company line since Triple H threw a hissyfit about some kid’s poster of him on Tough Enough: green as hell, couldn’t work, matches too short, people would have gotten sick of him. Next year will be the 30th anniversary of his first televised match, and there is still a lot of allure to Goldberg. He is still a draw. His main event work, particularly matches like this one, have improved in stature as modernity necessitated longer and longer match lengths to be seen as worthy, but if you say “Goldberg was good,” motherfuckers will try to shame you for it. Goldberg was good, Joseph. He was great! And while a lot of credit for this match is rightly given to Diamond Dallas Page, Goldberg more than holds up his end of the bargain. Both men are feasting. WE ARE FEASTING.
Colette Arrand
Joseph Montecillo
Goldberg is the 35th greatest wrestler ever on the only correct and accurate ranking (mine) and I love him. Nobody gave him enough flowers for his retirement match against Gunther, which was better than Cena's (not that that's hard to do). This guy fucking ROCKS.
Joseph Montecillo