According to comments made by Bill Goldberg, WWE was considering ways to make his scheduled match against Roman Reigns happen in the days between when WrestleMania 36 was filmed on March 25 and 26 in Orlando and when it aired on April 4 and 5.
Goldberg, a WWE Hall of Famer, was initially set to defend the WWE Universal championship against Reigns, but Reigns, who has twice battled leukemia, felt he was at particular risk should he contract coronavirus and withdrew himself from the match. Braun Strowman took Reigns' place, but WWE didn't completely give up on making Goldberg-Reigns happen under the wire.
"I did the match with Braun, and then it was possible that I could wrestle Roman again, before the fifth [of April]," Goldberg told host Matt D'Andria on the Carcast podcast. "That obviously fell through.
"My obligations were complete for the year -- my second match was already wrestled, so I was literally done. I come back here [to Texas] on Friday, jump on the tractor, eat as many bonbons and Uncrustables, drink Cokes, don't go to the gym for five days, and then I get a phone call in the middle of the week that it's still a possibility."
According to Goldberg, who called filming WWE TV and WrestleMania 36 the strangest two weeks of his life, those secondary efforts to make the scheduled bout with Reigns a reality ultimately fell flat.
"I don't know why it was even considered [from] the beginning," Goldberg said, "except for the fact that we'd invested time and WWE invested money in the angle and the match. [But] until the 23rd hour, it was still a possibility that he and I were going to wrestle.
"I think what happened was someone was sick, and Roman heard about it," Goldberg continued. "They just had the flu. But just the fact that somebody was sick in those circumstances, at the end of the day, he just couldn't do it. ... It's Roman's decision, and whatever he decided, everyone had to go with because none of us are in his shoes."
Goldberg discussed the complicated nature of traveling from his home in Texas to the WWE Performance Center in Orlando where WWE has moved all of their production, to fulfill his filming obligations.
"You're going into Florida. ... The first time I went there to film, it was as if nothing was even going on," Goldberg recalled. "People were still hitting the beaches, it was unbelievable. You limit the amount of people that you see. Obviously you go private travel, you have somebody pick you up at the airport, and then they wait for you until you're done. When you're done, you jump right back in the car and you get right back on the plane.
"The conditions [at the Performance Center] were such that it was as controlled as humanly possible.," Goldberg continued. "[When] we went to the training facility in Orlando, our temperatures were taken when we walked in, the place was scrubbed up and down. "There were a very limited amount of people in and out of the building. It was very controlled."
Looking back, Goldberg was of two minds when it came to his role at WrestleMania 36.
"You feel as though you have a responsibility to the public, because you do. We're one of the very few entities that are going on right now. And at the same time, you feel as though you're being irresponsible," Goldberg said. "So it's a fine line, but it's a business, and Vince McMahon is a businessman.
"He was there, so he's not going to ask anybody to do that he wouldn't do. People could see that, and understand that he was willing to put himself in a situation that was obviously good enough for an older person like himself to be there. These are different times."