Goldberg’s WWE retirement ride is about more than him as AEW battle revs up

Goldberg began his career as a major weapon for WCW in the Monday Night Wars of the late 1990s. He will end it as a major chess piece in the next great battle in the industry between WWE and AEW.

The three-time world champion returned to WWE television for the first time since a cameo at Bad Blood in October to challenge Gunther to a World Heavyweight championship match at Saturday Night’s Main Event in Atlanta on July 12 for the start of the “Last Ride” of his career at 58.

The city is a special place for the former Atlanta Falcon as it is also where he had his most famous match against “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan and won the WCW championship at the Georgia Dome in July 1998 on Nitro, when he was lighting up the wrestling world and buying Ted Turner’s company another year at the top of the industry against WWE before its inevitable collapse.

Nearly two decades later, WWE will bank on Goldberg’s star power again as the likely centerpiece of a weekend of counter-programming against AEW’s biggest show of the year, All In from Globe Life Field in Texas.