Goldberg was originally scheduled to defend the Universal Championship against Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 36 in 2020.
However, Roman pulled out of the event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as his wife was pregnant at the time and he didn’t want to risk anything.
WWE then replaced Roman with Braun Strowman, who went on to defeat Goldberg to win the Universal Championship.
During an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Strowman discussed WrestleMania 36 and his title win. Below are the highlights:
Vince McMahon originally canceling plans for him to become World Champion:
“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 f**king hard time.
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 pi$$ed 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.”
Goldberg handpicking him to beat him for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania 36 after Roman Reigns pulled out:
“It meant the world because 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.
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’.”
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