Eric Bischoff Discusses WCW's Controversial Bill Goldberg Vs. Steven Regal Match

When looking back on the history of Bill Goldberg's legendary undefeated streak in WCW, certain moments stand out more than most, namely his United States Championship win over Raven, WCW World Championship win at the Georgia Dome against Hollywood Hogan, and the streak's ending at Starrcade 1998 against Kevin Nash, to name a few. However, a match very early on in Goldberg's streak that has gone down in infamy was against Lord Steven Regal, better known as William Regal to WWE and AEW fans. 

Eric Bischoff talked about this match on his "83 Weeks" podcast, revealing that the original idea was that Goldberg needed nurturing so that he could work longer matches, mainly because WCW would run out of people who could afford to lose to him in less than a minute. Over the years, Regal has taken the brunt of the blame for the match, but Bischoff admitted some of it did fall on his shoulders and Regal's. However, the person who was at fault for the match was the agent of the match, whom Bischoff didn't name.

"When the s**t hit the fan, that agent looked down at a piece of paper and never looked up," Bischoff said. "Never took responsibility, never jumped in and said, 'Wait a minute, I think part of the problem was we didn't do a good job communicating. I'll take responsibility for that as the agent, he's how we fix it next time.' That didn't happen, all the blame went to Regal. He'd been clean for seven months, it wasn't a drug issue, it wasn't an attitude problem."

Regal became the first man to truly put up a fight against Goldberg, and he too admitted that the agent of the match was to blame for it going awry.

Please credit "83 Weeks" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.