Braun Strowman reflects on defeating Bill Goldberg for the WWE Universal Title at WWE WrestleMania 36.
Braun Strowman only captured a WWE World Championship once when he defeated Bill Goldberg in an empty WWE Performance Center at WWE WrestleMania 36 at the start of the global pandemic to become the WWE Universal Champion.
In a new interview with Chris Van Vliet for his Insight podcast, Strowman reflected on capturing the title and the importance of it despite the unique circumstances.
“In my mind, I didn’t know how long it would take, but I knew it was gonna happen. I’ve been very good at manifesting things in my life because I just grew up with nothing. So I had to work for everything. The only thing I’ve ever had given to me in my life is a fucking hard time and pardon my French. But yeah, so like just knowing that I can’t remember what documentary it is I start off talking at the beginning of it, it shows the full circle where at one point, we were getting close for me to be the champion, but something happened and Vince had changed his mind on it, and the show comes to this interview after I had this meeting with him and I was pissed off about it. Because I was like I don’t know what I’m not doing right what I’m not doing wrong, this and that, and that whole documentary leads up to me being told that it’s not my time to be champion, and it led to me beating Goldberg to become the Universal Champion, and it’s so crazy to see all that come to fruition in the story.”
When speaking about what it meant for him to defeat Goldberg for the championship, Braun Strowman reflected on idolizing the former WCW World Champion and what it meant for Goldberg to specifically hand-pick him for the job.
“It meant the world because I like I said, as a kid growing up idolizing him to becoming friends with him you know, unfortunate circumstances with everything going on with the pandemic and what happened, he wanted me. So he picked me to do that and do the honors and pass that torch," he said. "When we got there [it] was a whole thing. He goes to me he’s like, look, let me not paraphrase it wrong. He said I can count on one hand how many people that I would do this for and I still have three fingers left.”
Strowman recently returned to WWE after fusion surgery. He was drafted to WWE Raw in the 2024 WWE Draft. Learn more about his return here.
As for Bill Goldberg, he has put a retirement match on the backburner for now. Read more here.
