It's been confirmed that WWE Hall of Famer and WCW icon Goldberg will have his retirement match this year. Gunther is expected to be his opponent following their confrontation at Bad Blood last year, and that could be why the Austrian is once again World Heavyweight Champion.
In the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer said it was a Triple H decision to take the title off Jey Uso during Monday's RAW, and that it boils down to his wanting Gunther vs. Goldberg to be for the World Heavyweight Championship at Saturday Night's Main Event.
"Gunther vs. Goldberg was always going to be the retirement match and it was always going against All in Texas and on NBC," the insider explained, "with the idea of maximizing that day with the big match not on Netflix but on free network TV,"
He added, "Goldberg is currently scheduled to return on the 6/16 Raw in Green Bay, although the company has not announced it."
Goldberg has admitted that he's struggled to get back into ring shape, so there's no chance he has an extended run as champion. He could always win and relinquish the title afterwards, but it currently looks like he'll put Gunther over in a losing effort.
During a recent edition of his podcast, Jey's father and WWE Hall of Famer Rikishi was critical of how his son has been booked since winning the title on the Grandest Stage of Them All.
"Do we see Cody and John for SummerSlam? I don’t know. There has to be some type of reason for booking this tag team match," he said of the Money in the Bank main event. "I mean, I mentioned it: for me, I wasn’t a fan of it, because you got the world champion who just won this thing at Mania."
Rikishi has yet to break his silence on what happened during RAW, but expressed a desire to see Jey be tested by worthy opponents. "I feel we need to have top-notch players to be able to feed towards Jey, to let Jey showcase his talent, let Jey continue that ride to be [the] fans' champion."
"Let’s give Jey the dream matches to also contest his skills, because he’s never really been in that position as a world champion by himself," he added. "You don’t have Roman, you don’t have Solo, you don’t have Jimmy, you don’t have Jacob. This is all about Jey Uso."
Unfortunately, his title reign was pretty underwhelming. He defended it against Seth Rollins and Logan Paul, and ultimately lost it to Gunther. Whether holding the belt has done anything for his standing in the company is debatable.