Goldberg Reveals He Suffered Hand Injury in WWE Retirement Match vs. Gunther

WWE Hall of Famer Goldberg said Thursday that he suffered a hand injury during his retirement match against Gunther at Saturday Night's Main Event on July 12.

Speaking on his CarCast podcast (h/t Fightful's Andrew Thompson), Goldberg noted that while he largely felt good coming out of the match, he was somewhat worse for wear.

"You can’t really tell, but my hand, I broke my hand at some point in that match," Goldberg said. "I think today’s the first day I can see veins back in my hand. It's not nearly as swollen as it was."

In what was billed as the final match of his illustrious career, the 58-year-old Goldberg challenged Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship in the main event of SNME in his adopted hometown of Atlanta.

The match went over 15 minutes and Goldberg got his fair share of offense in, but The Ring General ultimately managed to make Goldberg pass out to win the bout and retain the title.

Controversially, Goldberg's post-match retirement speech was cut off on NBC when the clock hit 10 p.m. ET, prompting Goldberg to publicly express his displeasure with how things went down.

On his podcast, Goldberg indicated that he felt WWE may have been planning all along to cut his speech short as a means of funneling fans toward social media to watch the rest of it:

"It might as well been a conspiracy because you had six months to plan for it. Also, I knew to an extent that was gonna happen because they were silently pushing the social side of it because obviously, you keep people with a cliffhanger on national television and then say that the rest of the speech with be blistered on social media and it’s gonna drive traffic if people care about what it is. So I knew at some point—but I thought in two minutes, it was gonna go to that, and it didn't. … It went somewhere. ... It's bulls--t, so I mean, you know, I'll get into more in about a week."

Despite his unhappiness with how some aspects of his retirement match played out, Goldberg made sure to praise Gunther, and suggested that he enjoyed the match itself because of the fact that he got to work with the world champ:

"All I hear is people complaining about me complaining and not many have reached the fact that it was the second-longest match I ever did in my life at 58 years old. Now, I could not have done it without Gunther. That kid is freaking unbelievable. I mean, it was a wonderful opportunity to be in the ring with him, and an honor, and I couldn't have done it without him. Your limitations are yourself and your dance partner, and he made it happen, so it was awesome. I had a good time."

Gunther has long been widely regarded as one of the best in-ring workers in the world, which perhaps made him the ideal choice as Goldberg's final opponent.

Goldberg has never been one for long matches. Even during his heyday in WCW, he usually dispatched his opponents in a few minutes, much to the delight of the fans.

He was tested at Saturday Night's Main Event, and even though Goldberg clearly wishes some things would have gone differently, he did play a role in delivering a match that was better than most fans probably expected.