World Heavyweight Champion Gunther had a classy and respectful message for the WWE Hall of Famer Goldberg at the post-show interview of the recently concluded Saturday Night’s Main Event XL in Atlanta, Georgia.
The NBC television special marked the end of the legendary in-ring career of Bill Goldberg. While he did put up a good fight, Gunther eventually managed to choke out the legend to retain his World Heavyweight Championship.
In the buildup for the match, which originally began last year at WWE Bad Blood, The Ring General did not mince his words when speaking about Da Man. Apart from questioning his in-ring prowess, he even questioned Goldberg’s ability as a parent in front of his son, Gage, a point that he used to antagonize the youngster even last night during the match.
However, the WWE Hall of Famer’s surprising performance during their match seemed to have surprised Gunther, who had only praise for the 58-year-old veteran.
Gunther Was All Praise For Goldberg, Says He Is A Mount Rushmore Character
In an interview with Sam Roberts on the Saturday Night’s Main Event Recap, The Ring General was asked about his experience of being in the ring with Da Man.
The World Heavyweight Champion only had praise for his opponent, admitting that he was surprised by the fact that the match went longer than he expected. Gunther stated that while Goldberg would not always be admired for his wrestling skills, his personality and character warranted Da Man to be a Mount Rushmore character in the wrestling business.
The Ring General also praised the Hall of Famer for coming out of a hiatus to fight for reasons that were dear to him, and now that the match was over, he could pay his respect to his opponent:
Yes, I agree to that, and I feel like that is something about Goldberg in general, he is not a Mount Rushmore wrestler of this business or anything, but him as a person, as a character, as a brand in this business, he is definitely, yeah he is a Hall of Famer already but a Mount Rushmore character, Mount Rushmore personality in this business and that’s what made him so special, is that he never needed to be technical wrestler, he never needed to have a lot of finesse, every thing he did and its almost little bit similar to what I do, he is very straight to point, he is very straight forth so that guy was not easy to handle for anybody he ever stepped in the ring with.
So I expected that, but to be honest, today, it caught me by surprise like I was out there with him for 15 minutes [Yeah], maybe a little bit longer. I don’t think anybody really expected that out of the match, and I expected it to be shorter, so that was a big surprise to me.
And so that being said, after it is all said and done, I can pay my respects to him, to Bill Goldberg, he came back for the right reasons to fight for what’s near and dear to him, obviously it was for the World Heavyweight Championship but I would say going into that you could tell it was about something way for personal than the championship so I got pay my respects to him,” said Gunther.
You can hear Gunther’s statement about Goldberg beginning at the 19:03 mark:
The Ring General’s statement doesn’t come across as a surprise, considering that Da Man put up a hell of a fight, but it is always nice to see legends of the business getting their flowers from the new generation.