Goldberg vs. Raven: What WWE Could Learn From This Match

Goldberg was in the middle of his streak and won his first championship in this crazy match against Raven.  What could the WWE learn from this match and use today?

The year was 1998, I had just graduated from college the previous year and watching professional wrestling was something I would just stop on occasionally while flipping through the channels.  The early 90s WWF had become something uncool.  It was for kids with goofy characters and predictable stories, very similar to today’s product.  However, one Monday night I was visiting some friends and they had WCW Nitro on TV and it changed everything for me.

The match was Goldberg vs Raven for the US Championship.  This was the first match I had watched in a long time so I had no real background of the story of either of these two guys.  Thus it was up to the performers and crowd to tell me who I should root for and what was going on.  This was the perfect match to bring a former fan back into the fray as you had the unpredictability of a Raven match with the pure charisma of the young Bill Goldberg who was in the middle of the “Streak”.

ALSO ON DAILY DDT: Daily DDT’s Top Ten Tag Teams

The match itself was insane.  From the start you had Michael Buffer doing the introductions and the crowd was incredibly hot from the start.  Once the match began it was non-stop action.  The match was a “Raven Rules” match which was basically a No DQ, No Countouts, and Falls Count Anywhere match which added additional intrigue, especially for someone who hadn’t watched in years.

During the match you had a chair involved, long periods of fighting outside the ring, and when Goldberg looked to have the advantage, Raven’s faction “The Flock” came out and Goldberg took each out one by one.  While that happened Raven looked to escape not to lose the championship.  However, “fans” in the crowd picked up Raven and threw him back over the railing forcing him back into the match.  That is something I had never seen before and have not seen since.  Goldberg went on to win the title with a spear and jackhammer but WCW and WWE both won as they had regained a fan that quickly became a superfan.

WWE should really look at matches from this era.  This match was exciting, different, a bit edgy but all was done within a PG content frame.  The crowd was into the match, most standing the entire time.  Most importantly a new star was being built, one of the few stars in WCW that was created and peaked with them vs jumping ship to WWE.

Next: Are These Former WCW Contracts?

Imagine if WWE today had a new character who only wrestled a certain style of match to gain an advantage.  If they built up a young star that seemed not necessarily invincible but at least destined to take down the Authority.  Moving once again away from bad gimmicks and standard matches to where you truly never new what you would see on Monday Night Raw or the monthly pay-per-view events.  They can do all this and still remain PG and family friendly.  However, they will need to change their current booking mindset and looking to the past may be a great place to find those new ideas.