Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  Baseball was my second love, and when I got that scholarship out of high school to play at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, a school that produced such players as Norm Cash for the Detroit Tigers, I really thought I would follow in the footsteps of my baseball idol, Mickey Mantle; playing in Yankee Stadium one day. But would it have been as satisfying playing in the “House that Ruth Built” as it was when I wrestled in front of thousands, millions for Starrcade, the Great American Bash or even WrestleMania VI?

  How different would my life have been if I had stayed on one of those two paths instead of the one that ultimately took me here?

  How different would pro wrestling have been without “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes? How different would it be today?

  “To me, he’s probably the greatest showman of our time.”

  —BLACK JACK MULLIGAN

  But all of these questions really don’t matter. It would all come back to me as it does right now in that I wasn’t wrestling my brother anymore in our backyard in Austin, Texas, but I was in Madison Square Garden in New York City, the Cow Palace in San Francisco, the Tampa Armory, or one of a hundred other major arenas I’ve performed in and I realize that it doesn’t matter what could have been, what’s important is what was and what is … and good or bad, I was ordained to live the rest of my life as “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes; something a whole hell of a lot bigger than Virgil Riley Runnels Jr. could ever possibly be. That was my destiny and I thank God for it.

  “I think Dusty battled self-esteem issues all his life. His speech impediment and his less than bodybuilder physique, I feel, caused him some anxious moments even as a young kid. I’m not Dr. Phil and I might be wrong, but I think one of the driving forces behind Dream’s success for so many years is the fact that he was driven internally to overcome what he perceived as personal liabilities in a very cosmetic industry. He was smart enough to turn what many may have perceived as liabilities into assets because very few wrestlers have ever identified and connected with such a wide spectrum of the wrestling fans as ‘The American Dream.’ ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin comes to mind on a short list.”

  —JIM ROSS

  When I hit my stride buddy, “The American Dream” was like an out-of-control bucking bronco and there wasn’t anybody, anywhere who could tame this wild fucking ride.

  Now I’ve mentioned a lot of ongoing themes so far in this book—rules of engagement if you will—that I consider integral parts of both my life and the wrestling business. I’ve talked about believability and respect, taking care of family, and business is business. There’s another theme that I’ve touched on a little bit, but in the aftermath of the creation of The American Dream the wrestler, this is another rule that is very clear cut with me and one that I’ve never taken lightly … everything in wrestling is black and white.

  Now, that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. But the reality of the situation is this: in pro wrestling it’s either one way or another, there’s no middle ground, no shades of gray. You can’t be successful by being wishywashy. You can’t run a successful wrestling promotion by walking down the middle. Unfortunately, some people in the business don’t like that notion or don’t understand it.

  Even though my life outside of the wrestling business might be made up of shades of gray, and that’s fine for living a life outside the business, but when it comes to pro wrestling, there can only be black and white.

  Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about … it was during my time at World Championship Wrestling. Sometimes choices are made that wrestlers don’t understand and tempers get out of hand and they just don’t realize it has nothing to do with anything except business. Business is business!

  At well over 400 pounds, his head was so red from rage I thought he was going to have a heart attack. His name was Leon White, Big Van Vader, and at the time my top heel. Vader was pissed, or at least he thought he was. I sat across from him as Eric Bischoff, the newly hired executive producer, sat to the side. It was a conference I’ve had many times as the head of all wrestling matters, the last of the real one-man booking committees.

  Out of the blue he leapt to his feet, looking like a wild rhino charging a hunter. Being only about five feet away, Bischoff fell back in his chair as a horror overcame the room. He was about to either kick my ass or kiss me. Just before the impact came, he stopped right in front of my face and came nose to nose. He leered at me with a rage in his eyes that was thick, man … the breath coming out of his mouth covered my whole head. He spat when he talked. Holy dog fuck, this was intense.

  “Dream,” he said as he finally broke silence, “that’s the trouble with you. There is no gray area; it’s always black or white.”

  And it was. Being able to define the world of wrestling and all its matches was always black or white with me. Some people got it. Some people didn’t. It took a wildly tense situation for Vader, one of the best big men in the history of our industry to get it … and to understand why. Think of it this way, Vader was a 400-pound kid who was sent to timeout and he didn’t want to go. But when it was all said and done with, he knew he was wrong and he had to take responsibility. He wasn’t going to bully his way out of taking his medicine.

  But you see, even something that’s so apparently black and white can’t necessarily stand by itself. Fuck no! Because while it may be black and white in appearance, business is still business … the people you work with are your family and you’ve got to take care of them … and you can’t do all that without the respect for the business and the believability that what you’re doing is the real deal. It’s so important to understand how all these elements are intertwined.

  It’s also important to understand how this philosophy helped me climb to the top of the pro wrestling industry and overcome those who were either in my way or attempted to knock me back to the bottom rung of the ladder … and believe me, there were many in the industry who wanted to see Dusty Rhodes fail.

  But the more I was over with the fans, the more power I got, and call it ego or whatever, but it got to the point that I became so powerful in Florida, so powerful in the business, that I thought I could do just about whatever I wanted to do, without the fear of suffering any consequences … and I did … in a big fucking way.

  I realized from an early point in my career that interviews were 75 to 80 percent of the matches, so in order to make my impact and draw a crowd, I knew I had to reach the people; I had to get inside their heads and their hearts. If I didn’t know what they wanted to see or hear, there was no way I was going to be successful. Look at the people who draw money, big money in our business, and every one of them could do an interview, or cut a promo as we refer to it in our business. Me, Hogan, Flair, Savage, the Rock … every one of us sons of bitches could talk just as well as or in some cases better than we could work in the ring.

  “The most impressive thing about Dusty was here was a guy that truly had a handicap—he had a speech impediment and a lisp—and at times he was difficult to understand. But when he got in the business, he realized he had to be on TV, so he used it to his advantage. He had to work on it because talk was so important. He had the ability of talking the fans, manipulating them into the arena. He was one of the greatest talkers in the business and people emulated him—like ‘Superstar’ Billy Graham and Austin Idol—and they went on to be successful.”

  —TERRY FUNK

  When this big, fat, African American woman fell about ten feet from a balcony at a show in Atlanta at the city auditorium, and they asked her what happened, she said she was trying to get a glimpse of “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes. Well, right there it tells us why so many people came out to see me. They weren’t there to see me do a hurricarana, or a flying drop kick or a flying elbow off the top rope. They were there because during my interview I told them I was going to kick somebody’s ass they didn’t like, and in the process they knew I would throw the bionic elbow, do the flip, flop and the fly, and shake
my ass with as much attitude as I possibly could.

  “He was natural … it wasn’t forced. Dusty didn’t need to have one bit of wrestling ability; he didn’t need to. People came for entertainment. He was showbiz. A performer that had few equals.”

  —”SUPERSTAR” BILLY GRAHAM

  Dick Murdoch was in Jackson, Mississippi, with me one time and he asked me about this whole thing with the people of color and all, asking me how I could go out and act like that and I told him that if not for them, if not for the people of all races, colors and creed, there’d be no “American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes. I knew where my bread was buttered.

  So Hoyt, what does he do? Here comes “Captain Redneck.” Now you’ve got to remember, before being given that name, Murdoch was the original “Captain Redneck,” period. But he understood a lot of things and he knew he could draw money with that persona, because the fans loved to hate him since they knew he was a fucking racist … even though he really wasn’t, as I mentioned earlier. I think everybody’s got a little black, a little Indian and a little white in them.

  By now I was doing interviews that were so compelling it was almost like I was a reverend delivering a sermon and my parishioners were the fans. One of the guys in the office, I forget who, said I sounded like Jesse Jackson in my delivery, and the people were into it. They bought it, man.

  “When Lyndon Johnson died, Dusty gave a eulogy on TV like a minister or something. To this day, it was one of the best interviews I’ve ever heard.”

  —REGGIE PARKS

  It didn’t matter that I borrowed some of the jive from those who were street-smart, and I don’t mind saying that, because later on people would borrow from me … what mattered was that the fans of all colors, black, white, brown, yellow, and red were my people, and I was their hero.

  “Did I imitate Dusty? I took a lot from Dusty. I was influenced by him and (Muhammad) Ali. Dusty and I rubbed off on each other. Dusty, Jimmy Valiant and I fed off of each other.”

  —”SUPERSTAR” BILLY GRAHAM

  So you see, I just had this knack. By saying the right thing at the right time, I could talk the people into coming out to the arena. You’ve got to remember, there are concepts that you have to be sensitive to, and I was always aware of what I was doing. Sure, I had to push the envelope sometimes, but I knew how far I could go, and I knew I had the people in the palm of my hand and so did everyone in the office.

  There’s no better way to illustrate this than how we set up my match with Bearcat Wright in the world-famous Fort Homer W. Hesterly Armory in Tampa.

  Bearcat was one of the first African American heels at a time in the business when others of the same creed and color were considered strictly babyfaces; Sailor Art Thomas and Bobo Brazil out of the Detroit territory are two who come to mind. But Bearcat was different. He was a nasty heel. People did not like him at all. Unlike Ernie “the Big Cat” Ladd, or Big Red as I called him, who had been to Florida and despite being a heel the fans loved—and I want him to know that I loved him too, as he was a great interview—they just hated Bearcat … he was a sleazy, sleazy guy.

  I started to notice at the Armory that there was always a group of black teens who yelled all sorts of shit at him, including the “N” word.

  “You’re a nigger! You’re a real nigger!” they’d yell at him.

  Holy shit, I thought, this could be powerful. So I went to Eddie Graham and I told him I was going to say the “N” word during a TV interview.

  Remember, my ego told me I could do just about whatever I wanted to do.

  So I did. I called Bearcat Wright a nigger during one of my interviews. I said that my black, white, green, yellow, whatever brothers know when somebody’s not really true … we know when somebody’s faking. It aired right on WTOG-TV, Channel 44 in the Tampa Bay area.

  Then it was his turn, and during his interview to promote the upcoming card at the Armory, he said I wasn’t the only one who thought that of him.

  “What do they yell at me in the armory?” he asked.

  What did they—the fans—call him in the armory on Tuesday nights? Nigger!

  With apologies to Kevin Costner and his Field of Dreams, I knew that if I said it, they would come. And they did. They came via Interstate-4. They came via Interstate-75. Back then the Tampa police chief would try to keep the African American fans in the balcony. So many fans turned out to the Armory that night to support me, segregation was not going to be possible.

  It was a gamble that paid off. If I wasn’t as over as I was and I didn’t have the power I did, I would never have gotten away with it. If anybody else had even tried to do it, they would have incited a riot. But then again, nobody else was “The American Dream.”

  But that wasn’t the only time we were able to talk people into the arena.

  When we ran the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg, we usually opened the doors at two o’clock for an eight o’clock show because the building always had a low proportionate attendance as it was a lot bigger than the Armory … but not for this show. Terry Funk and I talked all kinds of shit back and forth to build it up. When the doors opened at 2 p.m., there were 2,000 people waiting outside.

  Just before the show started, an announcement was made: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have just set a new attendance record here at the Bayfront Center.”

  The new record broke the previous one set by The Lawrence Welk Show. That’s right, Lawrence fucking Welk. He always had a big show in the building … we held the new indoor record … un-fucking-believable.

  I remember asking Duke Keomuka who was part of the office, “How is it?”

  He looked at me and said, “Not bad.”

  Not bad? Horseshit! This fucking announcement stated we broke a record and the office shrugs it off, trying to make it less than what it was; that would be their mentality, though. They always protected the office.

  I said, “Duke, you set a fucking record.”

  That night Andy Hardy, the local TV news guy and a good friend of Gordon Solie, had a helicopter shot of the Bayfront Center on the six o’clock news and it looked like 10,000 people had been turned away from the show instead of 2,000. From the sky, the building looked like it was the Super Bowl.

  “Give Dusty a minimal amount of TV time and he can create a promotion.”

  —BLACK JACK MULLIGAN

  If that ain’t having power, buddy, I don’t know what is.

  It’s the stuff like this that irks me nowadays sometimes when I see these guys who write for the Internet and they’ve only come on board from yellow finger until now and even afterward during the stunt wrestling era and they know nothing about what happened before … they haven’t got a clue as to who really had power in the business and most importantly, why. They’ve not really studied their so-called profession.

  The industry of pro wrestling is not what they think. The ones who believe they are on the inside are really just standing on the banks of some raging river, looking across it … and that my friends, is risky business.

  So all these guys think the power and icon shit started with yellow finger. Bull fuck. It’s been around a hell of a lot longer than Hogan, or any of us for that matter. In Texas, Fritz von Erich had it. In New York, Bruno Sammartino had it. In Detroit, the Sheik had it. In Minneapolis, Verne Gagne had it. Going back to when I was a kid, I know Lou Thesz had it. Before him, I’m sure “Strangler” Lewis had it. And if you go back far enough, I’m sure George Hackenschmidt had it. The fact he was the world champion like 100 years ago and we even know his name today, proves that he had it, because 100 years from now people will still know the name “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes. Power, respect, believability, longevity … what the fuck is so hard to understand?

  It’s very simple. When you have power in pro wrestling, when you are so over with the fans, they become your people, and once they are yours, the promoters can’t do anything but let you do whatever the hell it is you want to do. This is all part of what made me who I became du
ring the “Me Decade” … “The American Dream Decade” … and in a way it carries right on through to today.

  It happened at the Atlanta airport recently. One of the skycaps who has been there for about 30 years said to me, “What happened to you, man? You’re getting too old to make a comeback.” He was talking about the fact that I had started working with TNA and being on their Impact TV show.

  He said he saw this deal on TV where Ron “The Truth” Killings went out and got hit with a guitar by Jeff Jarrett. Well, he didn’t like that at all.

  So on the very next TNA Impact show, I was sitting at the announcer’s table, and this time I had the guitar wrapped around my neck by Jarrett, and “The Truth” came out to save me.

  So when I went back to the airport and asked him, “How was that? Was that okay for you?” he said he thought it was cool that a brother saved me, but added that I “needed to get him,” meaning I needed to kick Jarrett’s ass because of what he did to me.

  This was one of my fans who remembered … respected me … and believed.

  If there ever was a John Wayne of pro wrestling, I’m him.

  “When Dusty got into an angle, you believed everything that came out of his mouth. He had the lisp going … he was a great worker and he had great psychology.”

  —”STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN

  Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s not only did I meet many great wrestlers who came through Florida, but I met many in my travels and many were those whose names the modern-day fans may have either forgotten, or never even heard of. Kind of like an eight-track player, it was hot when it was new, but now…

  This was a time when pro wrestling was starting to mold itself into what was about to become sports entertainment and the stunt wrestling of today.