Gillberg thinks WWE left some pretty obvious money on the table when it came to his parody of Goldberg. Not only did he never get the Goldberg vs. Gillberg merchandise matchup he thought made perfect sense, but he claims there may have been a very specific reason why WWE never gave him much merchandise at all.
Speaking on Developmentally Speaking, Gillberg talked about Goldberg’s apparent dislike of the parody character and wondered why WWE never released a battle pack featuring the two of them. Considering the entire Gillberg gimmick was built around mocking Goldberg, he couldn’t understand why WWE never cashed in on the obvious pairing.
“They — I don’t know how they didn’t make a battle pack of Goldberg-Gillberg.”
That wasn’t the only time Gillberg felt strangely missing from WWE merchandise. He brought up Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens’ famous Festival of Friendship segment, where Gillberg made a surprise appearance as part of Jericho’s attempt to give Owens “Goldberg.”
According to Gillberg, WWE eventually produced merchandise based around the Festival of Friendship but somehow left him out. He even claimed that an image featuring those involved in the segment didn’t include him.
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I was on the Festival of Friends. They did the entire Festival of Friends — everybody on it but me. Even the picture, you know what I mean? But not me.”
Gillberg then dropped a much more interesting explanation for why that might have happened. He claimed he’d heard that Goldberg actually had language in his contracts preventing WWE from giving Gillberg certain merchandise opportunities.
“Because I heard that Goldberg had in his contracts that Gillberg gets nothing — no action figures, no video games, no nothing.”
That’s Gillberg’s claim, and he didn’t say that he’d personally seen Goldberg’s contract or confirmed the language himself. Still, if what he heard was accurate, it would certainly explain why a character so closely connected to Goldberg never received the kind of merchandise treatment Gillberg expected.
It’s also why Gillberg still seems confused about WWE never putting the two together in something as simple as a battle pack. More than two decades after the parody became part of WWE history, he still believes Goldberg and Gillberg merchandise practically sold itself.
What do you think about Gillberg’s claim that Goldberg’s contract may have prevented WWE from producing merchandise for him? Let us know in the comments below.
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