Bill Goldberg guarantees WWE retirement match in 2025, wouldn't mind getting his 'hand around Cena's throat'

Bill Goldberg is professional wrestling royalty. A multiple-time former world champion and WWE Hall of Famer, Goldberg hasn't been seen in action since a big collision with one of wrestling's modern-day megastars Roman Reigns, when they had their match at WWE's 2022 Elimination Chamber event.

Goldberg, 58, lost to Reigns in Saudi Arabia and has been itching to return for one final match ever since. Speaking Wednesday on Uncrowned's "The Ariel Helwani Show," the multiple-time former world champion revealed he's received multiple promises from WWE that he'll get his wish, to the point where Goldberg guarantees it goes down in 2025.

"[Former WWE CEO] Vince [McMahon] had promised me another match because — not a lot of people know this — I took the Roman match with a month prior notice, I had COVID," Goldberg said. "That's not the way to go out. It's surely not the way to go out, and it's surely not the way to go out in Saudi Arabia, where so many of my fans couldn't be there live to watch the finale.

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"I always, from the bottom of my heart, wanted to go out and present myself a little more positively than I was able to. I'm the mild understatement guy. [WWE CCO] Paul [Levesque] and I spoke, we came to an agreement that in 2025, I'd have my retirement match. Don't know when it is, don't know who it's against, but they planted a little seed like they always do, and don't think that there may not be a swerve here or there. But it's professional wrestling, it is what it is. It's not what you see is what you get."

After his initial run with WWE from 2003 to 2004, Goldberg returned to the company in 2016 and has often been a character who looms large in the promotion's shadows for fantasy-type matches. Outside of dedicated feuds, his airtime on weekly programming or general events has been limited — he'd been absent since his last match in 2022 until Bad Blood 2024 hit his hometown of Atlanta this past October.

Goldberg made appearances as a part of the Atlanta crowd in the week leading up to Bad Blood, with seeds seemingly being planted between him and WWE World Heavyweight Champion Gunther. Ultimately, nothing has come of their brief encounter at Bad Blood — yet.

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Despite Goldberg's prime years coming in the '90s as one of World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) biggest stars, he believes the WWE vs. WCW rivalry will always carry a lingering stench.

"There's probably a reason for that [not happening]," Goldberg said of a Gunther match. "I'm a WCW guy. They want to extenuate the John Cena tour and all that kind of stuff. If anything ever happens, I'll pop out of mid-air and do my thing, wipe my hands clean of it and leave, and they'll be done with me. So there's a lot of truth to that, but I'll always be a WCW guy, right?

"Look at how [WWE] treated Sting. I was talking to Booker T the other day, and if you don't get into the wrestling business wanting to be part of the pinnacle of the wrestling business, which is WrestleMania and pay-per-views — as they used to be called — then you're crazy. I had goals to attain in the WWE, but the reality is, when we (WCW) were going head-to-head [with WWE], we were kicking their ass, they were kicking our ass, it was back-and-forth like a big heavyweight fight.

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"I'm a football player innately, and they were the enemy," he continued. "I still believe from the bottom of my heart, at the end of the day, it's still kind of that way a little bit."

Gunther hasn't needed a Goldberg match to elevate him in WWE, considering that he still reigns supreme as WWE Champion heading into April's WrestleMania 41 mega-event in Las Vegas. The 37-year-old Austrian has been touted for years as one of the best technical and overall wrestlers in the world.

If a match with Gunther does somehow come to fruition as this year's big sendoff for Goldberg, he'll have no qualms with it — especially after the tracks were laid in Atlanta.

"I could kind of look at it like I'm passing the torch," Goldberg said. "He's a young talent comparatively. Well, everyone's young comparatively. He's part of the new generation, and they need to be — I'm not going to say lifted up, but I think if that were the case, if it was Gunther and I, then it would be logical. There is some heat there, obviously, that's already been placed. He's the new generation, I'm the old generation.

"I wouldn't turn that one down by any stretch of the imagination, because you don't ever open your mouth in front of my wife and my son negatively about me."

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Finding the proper opponent for one final match for someone of Goldberg's status is a challenge simply because of the array of options that'd make sense, so he should have plenty of suitors once he starts circling possible dates for that last ride into the sunset.

Goldberg has some immediate names that come to mind, and they check all the boxes.

"I never got a chance to get my hand around [John] Cena's throat. That might have been cool," Goldberg said. "There's a lot of people that I would have loved to have faced back in the day, but the fact is that you look at: What does that do for the business now? A lot of people don't even remember me that watch wrestling right now. And a lot of people obviously don't know me because they speak negatively of me, and I think that I was an innovator of sorts.

"So there's a plethora [of options]. I'd love to have a rematch with Roman. There's so many guys that are so talented and on the cusp of stardom — if not there yet — that are possibilities. Bron Breakker. Hell, think of it — it's a logical solution, but it's all [about what] the powers that be want to see happen.

"We'll figure it out," he concluded, "and hopefully, at the end of the day, I'm able to present myself in a positive manner, to where the people of today who don't remember me will sure as frick remember me after they see me my last time. And it won't be in a negative way hopefully, physically understanding I do have a couple limitations."