Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  Some of the guys I worked and drew money with or who just stand out in my mind came in all shapes and sizes. These were men like “Superstar” Billy Graham, Bugsy McGraw, “The Canadian Freight Train” Jos LeDuc, Ox Baker, Wahoo McDaniel, Buddy Colt, and Ray Stevens just to name a few.

  While I probably won’t get into detail about all of these guys, there have been some over the years who stand out more than others as they have been associated with me most through our feuds. They are in no particular order, Terry Funk, Kevin Sullivan, Harley Race, Abdullah the Butcher and the Four Horsemen of Tully Blanchard with Baby Doll, Ole Anderson, Arn Anderson, and Ric Flair.

  Throughout the years I’ve had my own personal favorites for a variety of reasons, and a little bit later in the book I’m going to get into some details about some of these people when I lay out my Starrcade Prime fantasy card for you.

  But for right now, two of the people who set the standard for being the ultimate babyface and heel in the business were both out of Detroit; Mark Lewin and Ed Farhat, better know as The Sheik.

  Mark, who I mentioned earlier when I talked about going to Australia for the first time, as a worker was unbelievable, and he is who I patterned myself after when I made the switch to babyface. You were drawn to his in-ring presence. His command of the squared circle as a ring general was phenomenal. His timing was immaculate and his connection to the people, the way he “sold” being hurt, the way he made his comeback to fight the villain was brilliant. He was brutally handsome and he could make people cry or draw any emotion out of them he wanted just by the way he looked at the crowd. Jose Lothario was a very close second. So I studied Mark and I added to his style. Another person I saw a lot of Lewin in was Hogan, whether yellow finger realized it or not. When he sold 75 or 80 percent of his matches to guys like Roddy Piper or Paul Orndorff and built them up, and then he’d start making that Superman comeback, in a lot of ways it was like Lewin. The shake of the head, the glance to the crowd and then boom, he’d explode and fire back on the heel and draw that emotion from the crowd so he could whip the guy into the ropes, put his boot to their face and drop his leg on them for the one, two, three … ring the bell. Just like my flip, flop and the fly, and I’d drop the big elbow instead of a leg.

  “Dusty is like an onion, he has many different layers … if you meet him and get a chance to have a conversation with him, you can’t not like him. He’s charming in a hillbilly sort of way. He really is a common man, and I’ve never seen anybody relate to people like he does. He has the ability to connect with the people and a lot of people do not have that talent. He relates to the people and maybe more importantly, they relate to him.”

  —SIR OLIVER HUMPERDINK

  Then on the other side of the coin there was The Sheik. Not to be confused with Kosrow Vasiri, who was the Iron Sheik, with this guy there was nothing made up. He could make a large crowd of people scamper away simply by making a motion like he was going to attack them. All of his credit cards had “A Sheik” on them; they didn’t say Ed Farhat or whatever, they read “A Sheik” because in Detroit he was a Sheik … he was The Sheik. He was the one you were afraid of even as an adult. You were scared to death of him as a guy in the business, too … you were scared of him because he was the ultimate heel. You’d think, boy this guy’s fucking crazy. He carried himself like that all the time, never out of character.

  A couple of guys who patterned themselves in the style of The Sheik were my old nemesis Kevin Sullivan and The Sheik’s real-life nephew, Sabu. While Sabu never got the exposure he probably should have gotten because of his uncle’s political stature in the business, Sullivan, like The Sheik, was a master of living his gimmick 24/7, and to this day is never out of character.

  In our era, there is nobody who can compare with Mark Lewin or The Sheik in their prime … nobody … none … zero.

  Now from a pure wrestling perspective, one of, if not the best, wrestler had to be Jack Brisco. As I stated before, he was a real hero of mine. When he was the NWA champion and would come back for his monthly tour of Florida, we would ride around the Tampa Bay area after the matches, drink beer and listen to the newest outlaw albums. He didn’t know it, but he taught me a lot about being a student of the game. He was great and a lot smarter about the wrestling business than most people gave him credit for. He was a guiding hand in the building of “The American Dream” and a friend. If you’re too young to remember Jack wrestle and have not seen him in a match, get yourself a tape and see what your punk ass missed by not being around in the ‘70s.

  And then there was Andre.

  Next to Dick Murdoch and Terry Funk, the one guy I probably had the most fun being around during this era was the man who rivaled me in notoriety and maybe even in popularity—Andre the Giant.

  Born Andre Rene Roussimoff in Grenoble, France, Andre started his career in his home country wrestling under the ring name “Monster Eiffel Tower” when he was discovered by “The Flying Frenchman” Edouard Carpentier. Before long he was wrestling in Canada for the Grand Prix promotion under the name Jean Ferre, and he eventually found his way to New York working for Vince McMahon Sr., who changed his moniker to Andre the Giant and billed him as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

  I think the reason we got so close was because while he was booked by Vince Sr., I was booked by Eddie and Jim Barnett, and many times we would find ourselves booked in different territories together. Just like Sam Muchnick, the NWA president back then booked the World Champion— Harley or whoever—Andre and I would also be booked. I’d always end up back in Florida, but every so often I needed a break and would go to work for Bill Watts, Jim Crockett, or whoever.

  Anyway, one time Andre and I were at the Playboy Club in New York after a Garden show. There was a fat woman singing like Kate Smith and we were sitting at a table right up front and you could literally put your elbows on the stage. She was singing at the piano and Andre was so big that his head came up to where her leg was. She must have weighed about 500 pounds, and he started laughing one of those uncontrollable ones where you try not to laugh but instead you just keep going … then I started and this went on for about 30 minutes. We finally went outside and as the club was closing, with virtually nobody on the street, we somehow managed to rent these two horse-drawn carriages that go through Central Park. Well, I rented one and he rented the other one and instead of going through the park, we decided to race them back to the hotel.

  Andre always had money on him like there was no end and before I could get my money out, he just threw a hundred dollars to the driver of my carriage, and they took off. So there we were racing down the street. If the carriages would have been hot rods, flames would have been shooting out the back. Andre was leaning over because he was so big and his dark afro and my big white afro were flapping in the wind, and the drivers were these two black guys with these big top hats. What a sight that must have been.

  I was so drunk, I told my driver to get close enough to Andre’s carriage so I could jump from mine to his and go in between the horses like they do in the western movies … where the stuntman rides between two buckboard or stage coach horses and pulls on them to get them to stop. Well, that’s what I wanted to do, anyway.

  We were driving and people were coming out and they were looking at us like, “What the fuck …” and it was just things like that I remember about him … laughing so hard during the fun times. You enjoyed being around him, because we would have so much fun.

  Toward the end, unfortunately, he became hateful and bitter toward people; he didn’t want them around. I think he was just worn out as they got everything they could possibly get out of him. In the beginning, people were kissing his ass, but not anymore. Seldom do people care as much about you when you can’t do anything for them.

  But, like I said, when he was at his peak, and I was at mine, we had a lot of fun together. The one thing was, however, he always had a unique way of reminding me that even the most powerful people in our business can b
e fucked with every so often, and there’s not a thing you can do about it except laugh.

  The Giant was my friend and he loved playing ribs on people, and most of all he loved to play them on me. Whenever we were in New Orleans we would always head down to Bourbon Street after the shows to raise some hell.

  And so the story goes. …

  On this particular night the weather was fucking bad; it was raining, lightning, and the wind was howling. It must have been the wind that brought us to Andre’s favorite place on the street, the out-of-the-way home of some ugly French whores—well maybe not all of them were French—but they were all ugly whores!

  She loved talking about her girls. She loved talking about New Orleans. But most of all she loved talking to him; him being seven feet, five inches and 500 pounds of giant … Andre the Giant. She was from Montreal, Canada, and spoke French. He loved going to see her as I think it made him feel close to home. God knows it wasn’t her girls, because like I said, she had the worst stable of butt-ass ugly whores in all of New Orleans.

  We walked up to the top of the stairs and stopped. His eyes met hers and then lightning struck the roof of the fucking bordello and all the lights went out. After about 30 seconds I felt warm water running down the side of my pant leg. Ah shit, the rain. A slow, low laughter came from the Giant’s head—next came uncontrollable laughter… what I thought was rain from the roof was nothing more than him pissing on my leg. The fucking Giant had just pissed on “The American Dream” in a French bordello in New Orleans, Louisiana!

  As the lights came back on, the look on his face was priceless … he always smiled big at something funny, and his mouth looked like it had about 290 teeth in it; what a head! It was a great rib; a rib on me and the whole rest of the night I walked down Bourbon Street smelling of Giant piss.

  CHAPTER 7

  In April 2003, one of my agents, Mike “Arli$$” O’Brien, got me an independent booking in Lynhurst, New Jersey, not far from Giants Stadium.

  He picked me up to go to the small town, and as we drove there I couldn’t help but get this funky feeling inside and remember my guided tour of the Big Apple more than 25 years earlier, when Vince McMahon Sr. surprised me and “Superstar” Billy Graham with a tour of the city that never sleeps.

  Anyway, we arrived at the Knights of Columbus Hall and I was scheduled to fight Steve Corino; a little more on him later. The building held a couple of hundred people. The dressing area was a ten-by-ten room with 20-plus wrestlers changing in it. There was no rest room. No shower. Mike felt bad, but the guy paid us on our arrival. I had to piss in a popcorn box and throw it out the window, which I did several times that night. Every time I went to that window I could see the city—New York—off in the distance, across the river.

  Manhattan. The Garden. Cops on horse back. My first Garden sellout. “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes versus “Superstar” Billy Graham— Knights of Columbus Hall. “The Dream” versus a young star who was chasing his dream, also sold out; standing room only. What a fucking difference. What a wild ride on this lighting bolt!

  During the ‘70s and ‘80s, I had an incredibly large Southern fan base, and by the time I reached New York City I had already reached legendary status in Florida and Georgia. But this was it, man. Madison Square Garden. Wrestling’s Mecca, if you will.

  Thanks to the wrestling magazines, the Florida TV shows being seen in New York on WNJU-TV a Spanish station out of Newark, New Jersey, and Ted Turner’s WTCG-TV Channel 17 out of Atlanta (which would later become TBS) now being beamed across America, people in the Northeast were already starting to catch on with who “The American Dream” was.

  It was 1976 and here I was headlining the Garden. … I finally understood what all the hype was about. To play the Garden as a pro wrestler was and is equivalent to playing in Yankee Stadium as a baseball player. And headlining is like … well, it’s like something else.

  “The deal with Dusty in the Garden was no one ever heard anyone cut a promo like that or heard anyone as equally entertaining as I was. He literally took New York by storm. This guy came in and when he was making his comeback, he would make this stroll while I was down and selling and people would jump. Putting Bruno [Sammartino] aside, no one got a reaction in the Garden like Dusty got. He was the ultimate in entertainment. Not one technical move between us except the basics. It wasn’t necessary. It was all me getting heat on Dusty and him making a comeback … a simple formula. The New York market never saw anything like us together. It was pure magic.”

  —”SUPERSTAR” BILLY GRAHAM

  I remember looking down from the ring and there they were; a virtual who’s who of the Greenwich Village “in crowd.” Right there at ringside were Andy Warhol, whose career included paintings, films such as Outer and Inner Space, drawings, music production, sculpture, commercial art and pop art masterpieces such as his portraits of “Marilyn,” “Liz,” “Elvis,” “Campbell’s Soup Cans,” “Brillo Boxes” and “Flowers”; Omar Sharif, the actor best known for his lead role in the movie Dr. Zhivago; Cheryl Tiegs, the top supermodel at the time who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated among other magazines; and Peter Hill Beard, one of the world’s most prolific photographers whose works include “Longing for Darkness— Kamante’s Tale from Out of Africa” and “End of the Game” of which I proudly have an autographed copy … one of my prized possessions … where he wrote:

  Dear [a drawing of a deer instead of the word] Dusty [a drawing of a star follows my name],

  Warmest regards and many thanks for the ringside epic raved by all!

  Regards and admiration,

  Peter Beard

  The signature was followed by a drawing of an elephant symbolizing much of his work in Africa and his thumb print. It was very cool.

  After the show we all piled into a limousine and made our rounds to all of Manhattan’s hot spots. That’s all it took. I won’t say I was star struck, because I was a star in my own right. But from that point forward I knew that there was a crossover between what we were doing in wrestling and what they were doing in the so-called mainstream entertainment mediums. Before I knew it, “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes would have another nickname; Stardust. A star named Dusty … it was that simple.

  And as hard as it is for me to say this, a lot of what drove me back then was ego. Not all of it was ego, but a lot of it was.

  But, here’s the thing … everybody who gets into the wrestling business, has been in the wrestling business, or is thinking of getting into the wrestling business is driven by an ego; a big ego. Some of us may just show it a little bit more than others, but without pulling any punches, anybody who is in this business and says they don’t have an ego is just full of shit. If in their own head they don’t think they’re the star, they’re full of shit … and for those who didn’t or don’t make it big, I bet you can’t find one guy who doesn’t blame someone else, whether me in the past or someone in a position of power today, who they blame for their failure to reach their dream. Why? Because their ego tells them they were a star, but because of so and so, they never got the notoriety, the star power, the push into the spotlight or whatever.

  While I’m sure some of you cannot believe what an egotistical son of a bitch I must be or how full of myself I am, well, that’s no different than what my wife, Michelle, thinks of me when it comes to my “American Dream” persona.

  But I’m really not the egomaniac people think I am. It may be how I come across sometimes, but that’s just how I carry myself. Some people come across insecure, some people come across cocky, some people come across bitter. I happen to come across as having this big fucking ego because of the way I carry myself and how I present myself. I think people get confused between ego and confidence.

  My philosophy of the business says you are who you make yourself to be and you make it to the top and stay there because you’ve got that much more talent or charisma than the rest of those who are chasing their dreams. It’s that presence and pe
rception, that confidence and believability of walking through the curtain or down the runway and carrying yourself like a star because you really believe you’re a star.

  Now most people, except for those who are very close to me, can’t tell where Dusty Rhodes the celebrity ends and Dusty Rhodes the individual begins or vice versa. The line is very thin and even some who are close to me can’t really tell the difference. Well, say what you will about me, but the one thing I stood for, if I went out for a match or an interview, was when the fans left the building, they knew they definitely got their money’s worth. I may have been known as a common man to them for my chosen style of dress, including jeans, T-shirts and cowboy boots instead of Armani suits, but I’ve had my share of limo rides and dressing to the nines. I didn’t mind eating at McDonald’s or somewhere like that most of the time so my children had health, happiness, and financial security, but I’ve eaten at the Russian Tea Room, Club 21, and Christine’s. That’s the real Dusty Rhodes.

  Of course my heart will always belong to Texas and specifically to Austin, but I could have easily made New York City my home. I love the city and I love the people in it. The diversity is unbelievable. Sure, my friendships with Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe are legendary, but I’ve also partied at Studio 54, sang on stage at New York’s Lonestar Café with John Belushi, and hung out with people like Bobby “D” … or as you know him better, Bob Dylan … as well as people like Roy “Halston” Frowick, the famous designer for people like Jackie O and Liza Minnelli. As a matter of fact, the New York Times ran a story one time on Andy Warhol and his “three hundred pound wrestling friend,” alluding that we were more than just friends if you catch what I’m saying! Whoa! We were close, but not that close!

  Isn’t that what the American Dream is really all about? Living life to its fullest and doing the best you possibly can with the hand you’ve been dealt? Some people use the analogy of taking lemons and making lemonade. I say take the lemons, but try to go out and grab some apples, oranges, bananas, or whatever and make fruit punch.