Bill Goldberg spoke about his 1999 WCW Starrcade match with Bret Hart and Hart’s career-ending injury while appearing on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast.
“Bret Hart, I was a baby in the wrestling business. I was in WCW. They had a rocket in my butt as far as trajectory is concerned character-wise. Bret Hart had just left WWE and we all know about Bret Hart being one of the best wrestlers in the history of the world. I obviously was looking for as many mentors as humanly possible.”
“This guy was, he was one of the best ever and so I was enthralled with him. I didn’t idolize him by any stretch, I don’t idolize anyone, but I put him up on that pedestal as to be someone to very much learn from. They put us together and I did learn a lot from the guy. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”
“Then we had a match and unfortunately, during the match, something went wrong. I kicked him in the head. It was very stiff, and it was an accident. I never maliciously would try to hurt anyone. Well, let me rephrase that. I would never hurt anyone in a situation like that where they give me their trust.
Because wrestling is like a dance. You can’t perform properly if both people aren’t doing their thing and I didn’t do the thing right. He caught it in the head and it ended his career. I’ve never lived it down. I’m not a malicious person and I would never take advantage of anybody, especially in a physical sense like that.
So it was a complete accident, but to this day, he thought or he thinks that either I did it on purpose or I was so horrible at what I did that it just happened. So that’s the Bret Hart story. I’ve heard it for 15 years and I’ve heard about him bitching and moaning about me kicking him on the head. I can only say I’m sorry so many times and I can only be remorseful for so long. So that’s where we are. I still want to kill him.”
