This should be the last time we see Goldberg for a while

No Holds Barred match

The last time they met, Bobby Lashley was WWE champion. And he hadn’t yet put Goldberg’s son in the Hurt Lock.

The Road to Crown Jewel

The incident with Gage Goldberg happened after the referee stopped his dad’s attempt to take the title from Lashley at SummerSlam. MVP (more or less) took out the WWE Hall of Famer’s knee with his cane, eventually leading to the end of the match. The All Mighty, being The All Mighty, went to inflict more punishment on Bill G. His teenage son went to make the save, and got that work from the then-champ.

Goldberg was pissed, but he also said he needed knee surgery. Probably still does, but we’ll address that in a second. That announcement was enough to take him off the board long enough for Lashley to drop the belt to Big E via Money in the Bank cash-in.

Without a championship to worry about, WWE was free to book the rematch without worrying about whether they should strap the 54 year old WCW legend (again). It also allowed them to book this as a No Holds Barred match, which should allow the already-pretty-limited Goldberg to work around his knee injury, and to protect Lashley in a loss.

It also opened the door to a lot of murder threats from Bill. A LOT. Like every time he’s been on television in the build to tomorrow’s match in Riyadh.

What to watch for

We’ve pretty much covered what to expect while covering the build. Goldberg still needs to get his knee worked on, and then he needs to negotiate a new deal with Vince McMahon. Win or lose, he’s going to stand tall in Mohammed Abdu Arena on the Boulevard, getting payback for his son (and maybe with his son) before riding off into the sunset for a while.

He’ll be cheered for it in Saudi Arabia, but he wasn’t in the States. And if Bobby makes good on this promise...

... he might continue to be cheered for a while.