Bret Hitman Hart vs. Goldberg (Mar 1999 – Dec 1999)

Background

Bret Hart came to WCW straight out of the November 1997 Montreal Screwjob on a three-year contract worth $2.5 million a year, a light schedule, and a measure of creative control over his character.[1] A 60-day no-compete clause from the WWF meant he couldn't wrestle at his first WCW pay-per-view, Starrcade 1997; he refereed the Eric Bischoff and Larry Zbyszko match instead, then stepped in as an impromptu referee at the end of the Sting and Hollywood Hogan main event.[1]

He finally wrestled in January 1998, beating Flair at Souled Out in his first WCW match, after a feud built on both men calling themselves the greatest wrestler alive.[1]

He started out defending WCW's honor against the nWo, beating Brian Adams on Nitro and Curt Hennig at Uncensored, then helped Hollywood Hogan win back the world title in April and spent the rest of the year on both sides of the group, including a September angle in which he pretended to turn his back on Hogan.[1]

He traded the United States Heavyweight Championship with Lex Luger and Diamond Dallas Page through the second half of 1998, winning it back from Page in a No Disqualification match on the November 30 Nitro.[1] His WCW run moved between the nWo, the United States Heavyweight Championship, and feuds with Ric Flair, Sting, Diamond Dallas Page, and family friend Roddy Piper, who took the U.S. title from him on the February 8, 1999 Nitro.[1] Hart himself would later count only two moments from his entire WCW tenure as worthwhile. One of them was the night he met Goldberg.[1]

Goldberg came into 1999 as the man Hart would call out on television as WCW's "franchise player."[1] He was also, by his own later account, a fan of the man he was about to feud with: Hart "was an idol of mine and still is," he said in 2019.[3]

Build-up

The March 29, 1999 Nitro came from the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. Hart came out in street clothes and a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, ran down World Champion Ric Flair and Hogan for ducking him, and then called out Goldberg, WCW's "franchise player," claiming he could beat him in five minutes.[1]

He talked Goldberg into giving him the spear. Hart was wearing a metal plate under the jersey, and the impact knocked Goldberg out. Hart counted his own pinfall over him and announced, "Hey Bischoff, and the WCW, I quit!"[1][11] In reality, he had a groin injury from a November match with Dean Malenko and needed time off for surgery.[1]

The time off got much longer. On May 23, 1999, the night before Hart was due on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to hype his return, his brother Owen died in a fall from the rafters at the WWF's Over the Edge pay-per-view.[1] Hart took four more months away to be with his family.[1]

He came back on the September 13 Nitro and, on October 4, beat Chris Benoit in a tribute match to Owen at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, the building where Owen had died.[1] He later named that match and the steel plate segment as his two worthwhile moments in WCW.[1]

The world title picture had fallen apart at Halloween Havoc on October 24. Goldberg beat Sid Vicious for the United States Heavyweight Championship, then answered Sting's open challenge and beat him in an unsanctioned match for the world title, after which Sting attacked referee Charles Robinson.[4] The next night on Nitro, J.J. Dillon stripped Goldberg of the world title on the grounds that Sting had never put it on the line, and vacated it.[4]

WCW set up a 32-man tournament, and on the October 25 Nitro in Phoenix, Hart drew Goldberg in the first round, with Goldberg's United States Heavyweight Championship also on the line. With Sid Vicious and The Outsiders interfering behind the referee's back, Hart won in 7:52 in front of 9,630 fans and took the U.S. title.[4][16] He lost it two weeks later to Scott Hall in a four-way ladder match that also included Goldberg and Sid.[4]

At Mayhem on November 21, in front of 13,839 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Hart beat Sting in the semi-final and Chris Benoit in the final to win the vacant WCW World Heavyweight Championship.[4] Dean Malenko tried to interfere early on Benoit's behalf and Hart kicked him away. Goldberg helped too: when Hall and Nash came in late in the final, Goldberg speared Nash, and the three of them brawled into the back while Hart locked Benoit in the Sharpshooter.[4]

On the November 22 Nitro, Hart agreed to defend the title against Goldberg at Starrcade.[4] In the weeks between, the two were booked together and against each other in the same breath. On November 29 in Denver, Hart and Benoit beat Goldberg and Sid, and The Outsiders, in a steel cage triangle match.[6] Then on December 7, at a Thunder taping in Madison, Wisconsin, Hart and Goldberg won the WCW World Tag Team Championship as partners from Creative Control, a win that completed WCW's Triple Crown for both of them.[7][4] The Outsiders took the belts from them six days later on Nitro in New Orleans.[8][7]

The Matches

Starrcade ran on December 19, 1999 from the MCI Center in Washington, D.C.[2] Records disagree on the crowd: one lists 8,582, another 11,799.[2][9] The show drew a reported 145,000 pay-per-view buys.[2]

Hart and Goldberg main-evented under No Disqualification rules. Goldberg took early control with a gorilla press powerslam and worked Hart over against the guardrail outside.[2] Back inside, Goldberg missed a spear and hit the turnbuckle, and Hart went to work on his leg with a figure-four around the ring post and then a figure-four in the middle of the ring.[2]

Referees kept going down, even in a No DQ match; Hart knocked one out accidentally.[2] With the referee down, Goldberg came back with a kick and a spear.[2]

That kick was the one that ended Hart's career. In his autobiography, Hart described firing Goldberg into the ropes and hearing him call out as they reversed: "Watch the kick!" "I had no idea what kind of a kick he meant, and there wasn't much room coming off the ropes," Hart wrote. "Goldberg's right foot flew just under my right hand, WHAAAAM!"[10]

"It felt like someone chopped me with a hockey stick," Hart wrote in his autobiography. "It was an agonizing blow that sent me crashing to the mat where I lay holding my neck just behind my right ear at the base of my skull."[10] From there, by his own account, he remembered almost nothing, only the thought that he had to get up for the finish but couldn't remember what it was.[10]

He got up for it. Piper came down to officiate, Hart went back to Goldberg's leg and locked on the Sharpshooter, and Piper called for the bell without Goldberg ever submitting.[2] Hart retained the title in 12:30 and looked confused about it.[2][9] The finish was built to echo Montreal, with Piper, one retrospective noted, "playing the role of Earl Hebner."[11] Dave Meltzer rated the match two and three quarter stars.[9]

Aftermath

Because of the finish, the title was declared vacant the next night on Nitro in Baltimore. Hart and Goldberg wrestled for it again, and in front of 8,915 fans in Baltimore, Hart won in 5:44 with help from Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.[2][12] Hart, Hall, Nash, and Jeff Jarrett formed a new version of the nWo, called nWo 2000.[2]

Hart kept working, unaware how badly he was hurt.

"I was more responsible than anyone for downplaying my condition to myself and everyone else," he wrote. "I let myself go on, believing that the problem was a sore neck. I drifted through every day in a pale-faced, sweaty, head-pounding stupor, pacified to the point of numbness by the four Advils I took every three hours."[10]

He has speculated that he took as many as three more concussions in the day of Starrcade and the days after it, including one when Goldberg took a ring post figure-four wrong and Hart's head hit the concrete floor.[1] On January 13, 2000, in Calgary, he went to see NHL concussion specialist Dr. Willem Meeuwisse, who noticed he was slurring his words and told him he could feel a hole in the back of his neck "the size of a quarter."[17][10] Hart failed the memory tests: he couldn't repeat numbers backward or recall words he had been given moments earlier.[17] "He felt around the back of my skull," Hart wrote. "'This part here feels like hamburger. I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but your career is probably over.'"[10]

"After 23 years, I didn't want to go out like this," he wrote. "What would I do now?"[17] He was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, missed Souled Out, and relinquished the WCW World Heavyweight Championship on January 16, 2000.[2][1][17] nWo 2000 broke up soon after, the last version of the group in WCW.[2] Goldberg, meanwhile, was out injured himself in early 2000.[11]

The injury became television material that summer. On August 28, 2000, Hart attacked Goldberg with a shovel during a segment, and on the September 6 Thunder, in his last WCW appearance, he confronted Goldberg over the injury he'd suffered nine months earlier.[11][1] Hart said he felt like a circus animal waiting to be taken out and shot, and that the kick had cost him millions; Goldberg answered that he'd heard enough of Hart's whining in the media, and the segment ended with Scott Steiner attacking Goldberg from behind with a pipe.[13]

WCW ended Hart's contract by FedEx letter on October 20, 2000, citing his continuing incapacity.[1] On October 26 he announced his retirement. "It is with deep regret and sadness that I officially announce that my career as a professional wrestler is over... forever," his statement read. "Due to the severity of numerous concussions... my Doctors have advised me that any physical return to the ring would hold serious consequences for me."[14]

Behind the Scenes

The two men have never fully agreed about the kick. Hart has said that one of the last things he told Goldberg before they walked out was "Don't hurt me," adding, "I wish he heard me a little better."[10]

Goldberg, in a 2019 interview, said Hart "did kinda know it was coming," and was direct about intent: "If I really wanted to hurt the guy, he would have never have gotten up." He also said, "That's one thing I will forever be remorseful for is the misplaced kick."[3] In 2016 he called it "the biggest mistake that I have ever made in my entire life," and added: "God knows I put Bret Hart up on a pedestal where very few sit. The last thing that I ever wished upon him was harm, especially by my own hand." Every time he thinks about Hart, he said, he feels remorse about the kick, "and there's nothing I can do to take it back."[10]

Hart has put a number on the cost. On Sean Mooney's podcast in October 2019, he said: "When Bill Goldberg kicked me in the head I honest to god I lost about $16 million in like one second."[15] He explained that he had recently signed a new three-year WCW deal worth $3 million a year on top of the two years left on his original contract.[15] "I wish that Bill Goldberg had never kicked me in the head as hard as he could," he said.[15]

Hart's public view of Goldberg has swung between two poles. In an interview with The Columbus Dispatch, he was generous: "I've always had a lot of respect for Bill. He doesn't have a mean bone in his body, and what happened, it was just part of the job. I do wish he had been a little bit more careful, but we've always been friends over the years."[10] The two have even signed photos of the Starrcade kick together at autograph appearances.[10]

At other times he has been scathing. In VICE's 2024 docuseries Who Killed WCW?, he answered Goldberg's description of an accident directly: "No Bill, that's not an accident, that's a career-ending injury you idiot!" He added, of WCW's decision to build around Goldberg, "Bill Goldberg was not qualified, but he's our star."[18] Asked about safe wrestling earlier that year, he held up the Starrcade kick as the counter-example: "That's Bill Goldberg wrestling. That's not how it's done."[19]

Hart's own account of the injury is also more complicated than a single kick. His retirement statement cited "numerous concussions" suffered in late December 1999 and early January 2000, and he has described the additional blows he took while working through the damage in the days after Starrcade, including a chokeslam that left him seeing "silver dots."[14][1][17] The contemporary report of his retirement described him as still suffering the effects of the injury ten months later.[14]

The storyline around all this struggled even at the time. One feud retrospective called it "one of the most disappointing feuds in WCW history," arguing that "an opportunity to make money was squandered away."[11] The steel plate segment in Toronto is the part of it Hart himself remembered well.[1]

Legacy

Starrcade 1999 is remembered almost entirely for the kick. Eric Bischoff, who returned to run WCW's creative in 2000, later called it "the absolute worst pay-per-view from opening bell to closing bell that I've ever seen in my life."[2] The Montreal-style finish, one of the most controversial moments of Hart's own career replayed with him on the winning end, landed in the same match as the injury that ended that career.[2][11]

Hart had been inducted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame in 1996, while still active, and had held world titles in both the WWF and WCW.[1] He was inactive in the ring from January 2000 and retired that October at 43.[1][14] Two years after retiring, while serving as on-screen commissioner of World Wrestling All-Stars, he suffered a stroke that for a time put him in a wheelchair.[1] He returned for occasional appearances with WWE in 2010 and 2011, headlining SummerSlam 2010.[1]

Hart has said that without the injury he would have liked to end his career with a big blow-off match against Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, or The Undertaker, and even floated a ladder match with Michaels, "the match he ripped off from me anyway."[10] The Starrcade kick took that choice away from him at 42.[10][1]

Goldberg's feelings about Hart as a performer never changed, whatever happened between them. "He was an idol of mine and still is," he said twenty years later, even as the two kept disagreeing in public about what the kick had cost and whether it could have been avoided.[3][15]

Their whole in-ring history came in a burst of eight weeks at the end of 1999: opponents on October 25, on opposite sides of a three-team cage match on November 29, tag team champions together from December 7 to 13, and opponents again at Starrcade and on the next night's Nitro.[5][6][7]

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. Bret Hart — Wikipedia (WCW career, 1997–2000). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Hart
2. Starrcade (1999) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starrcade_(1999)
3. "Goldberg On Botched Kick To Bret Hart: If I Wanted To Hurt Him, He Wouldn't Have Gotten Up" — Fightful, December 23, 2019 (Goldberg interview with Inside The Ropes). https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/goldberg-botched-kick-bret-hart-if-i-wanted-hurt-him-he-wouldn-t-have-gotten/
4. Mayhem (1999) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayhem_(1999)
5. "Bret Hart vs. Goldberg: all matches" — Cagematch: The Internet Wrestling Database. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=111&nr=24578&page=2
6. "WCW Monday Nitro #219" (Nov 29, 1999) results — Cagematch. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=4340
7. List of WCW World Tag Team Champions — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WCW_World_Tag_Team_Champions
8. "WCW Monday Nitro #221" (Dec 13, 1999) results — Cagematch. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=4355
9. "WCW Starrcade 1999" (Dec 19, 1999) results, attendance, and Wrestling Observer ratings — Cagematch. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1713
10. "Bret Hart and Goldberg: The Kick That Ruined Bret's Career" — Pro Wrestling Stories (quoting Hart's autobiography Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling and his Columbus Dispatch interview). https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/bret-hart-goldberg-kick/
11. Bob Colling Jr., "Reliving A Feud #24: Bret Hart vs. Goldberg In WCW '99-00" — Wrestling Recaps, October 10, 2014. https://wrestlingrecaps.com/2014/10/10/reliving-a-feud-24-bret-hart-vs-goldberg-in-wcw-99-00/
12. "WCW Monday Nitro #222" (Dec 20, 1999) results — Cagematch. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=4356
13. "Bret Hart's Final Appearance In WCW Saw Him Trick Goldberg One Last Time" — TheSportster. https://www.thesportster.com/wcw-thunder-bret-hart-final-appearance-trick-goldberg/
14. Greg Oliver, "Bret Hart retires" — Slam! Wrestling, October 27, 2000 (includes Hart's retirement statement). https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2000/10/27/bret-hart-retires/
15. "Bret Hart says Goldberg's career-ending kick at Starrcade 1999 cost him $16 million" — GiveMeSport, October 2019 (Hart interview on Sean Mooney's podcast). https://www.givemesport.com/1511556-bret-hart-says-goldbergs-careerending-kick-at-starrcade-1999-cost-him-16-million/
16. "WCW Monday Nitro #214" (Oct 25, 1999) results — Cagematch. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=4313
17. "Bret Hart is told his wrestling career is over, 25 years ago today" — On This Day in WWE, January 13, 2025 (quoting Hart's autobiography). https://onthisdayinwwe.substack.com/p/bret-hart-told-his-career-is-over
18. "'That Was Not An Accident': Bret Hart Blasts Goldberg Over WCW Starrcade 1999 Incident" — ITR Wrestling, June 2024 (Hart in VICE's Who Killed WCW? docuseries). https://itrwrestling.com/news/that-was-not-an-accident-bret-hart-blasts-goldberg-over-wcw-starrcade-1999-incident/
19. "Bret Hart Slams Goldberg While Discussing Wrestling Safety" — ComicBook.com, February 5, 2024 (Hart interview). https://comicbook.com/wwe/news/bret-hart-goldberg-wrestling-safety/

Further Listening

• Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling (Bret Hart autobiography, 2007) — his own account of the WCW run, the Starrcade injury, and its aftermath
• Sean Mooney's podcast (October 2019) — Hart on the financial cost of the injury
• Inside The Ropes (December 2019) — Goldberg's interview on the kick