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WWE publishes Goldberg’s full retirement speech from Saturday Night’s Main Event

Posted: Jul 14th 2025 By: Ian Carey

Bill Goldberg’s full post-match address to the live crowd in Atlanta at Saturday Night’s Main Event has been published.

Parts of his speech aired on Peacock before the show went off the air on Saturday night. The full 10-minute speech is now available on YouTube.

Goldberg said to the live crowd:

“Every time I step in this ring, it’s with every one of you with me. All these kids, it’s the reason why I did what I did. I grew up wanting to be a professional football player. I was lucky enough to play at the University of Georgia. Go Dogs! I was lucky enough to play for the Atlanta Falcons. And I was lucky enough to beat Hogan in front of 45,000 of y’all. I’ve never thought about this moment because I never thought it would come. But I couldn’t have done it without you. Each and every one of you.”

He also offered the following advice:

“Treat everybody with respect. Treat everybody the way you want to be treated. Black, green, purple, Christian, Jewish, I don’t give a damn. You treat every single human being with respect. And if I did anything in my career, I honored that. And I try to pass that down. And every single human being in this ring is of the same character. Because if I let them stay in the ring with me, that’s who they are.”

“And this goes out to my father-in-law who passed away last week. This goes out to all the flood victims 30 miles from our house in Texas, North Carolina, everywhere where people have been negatively affected. And the one thing that I’ve learned is that you’re never too good to lend a helping hand.”

“And again, treat everybody with respect. This can be a really crappy world if you let it. But if you stand up and you put your damn foot down and you lead by example, then it’s going to be one hell of a ride. And I want every one of you to take that ride with me.”

He finished his speech by literally saying the words “mic drop.”

Following Goldberg’s speech, Cody Rhodes came out to the ring and led the crowd in a final round of Goldberg chants.

Assuming the 58-year-old stays retired, his career spanned nearly three decades, from 1997 to 2025. He began training at the WCW Power Plant after being encouraged by Lex Luger and Sting, who had met Goldberg while he was training at a gym they owned. He began wrestling dark matches for WCW in the summer of 1997 and debuted on television in September of that year.

Goldberg was voted “Rookie of the Year” by readers of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter in 1998. He was a three-time world champion in WWE, a one-time world champion in WCW, and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2018.