Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  So is this really all about someone with an inflated ego? Or is this just me talking about someone who took responsibility for providing for themselves and their family? You make up your own mind, because I’ve already made up mine.

  It’s like those stories in the wrestling magazines we all read as kids. I used to read them and think they were real. I didn’t realize until I got into the business that Bill Apter, George Napolitano, and some of the other guys used to make those stories up. Some of those guys were real dipshits, but not Bill or George. I read an old magazine recently that said I was studying in my den in Montana. … I never had a home in Montana, let alone a den. I couldn’t help laughing because my home was on the road and my den was in the ring. If fans would have been given the chance to read the real stories about “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes, they’d have a whole different perspective of me. They wouldn’t have to read a book like this to understand who I really am. And no offense to those magazine writers, but the real stories about the people in the business are a hell of a lot more interesting than the ones made up.

  “The purpose of the wrestling magazines, like the wrestling business, was to sell. There were a handful of people who we knew we could put on the cover to turn that issue to gold. Dusty was one of those people.”

  —BILL APTER

  The thing about Bill, or “Wonderful Willie” as I call him, was that he was always very respectful of me, and as a matter of fact, to this day he thinks he can imitate me better than anyone else on the planet and does so every chance he gets. If you call his answering machine, it’s him trying to sound like me. George was also very respectful and gave me lots of press.

  One of the things I was always thankful for when I finally reached that celebrity status was the crowd of people I ran with that I fondly refer to, even to this day, as my posse. While some members of the posse have changed over the years, these are the people who were and are my second family. These are the people who probably know me better than anybody. And unlike in other entertainment circles where some people try to sponge off you because you are famous, these people didn’t hang with me because I was Dusty Rhodes, this wrestling celebrity or any of that bullshit … these people hung with me because I was Dusty Rhodes their friend.

  Some of the stories and experiences we shared are pretty wild. So, in the words of my brother and posse member David Allan Coe, “If that ain’t country, I’ll kiss your ass.”

  First and foremost there’s Jerry Allen Lewis, better known to those in the Tampa Bay area as “Captain” Lewis of Captain Lewis and the Gator Tail Band. A regular performer at the Imperial Lounge in Tampa during my heyday, the good Captain could play a mean keyboard as well as the sax, having grown up in Detroit with such musicians as Bob Seger and Ted Nugent.

  Along with the Captain, two other members of his band were part of my posse; they included the late guitarist Phil Swain and a big, bald, tattooed guy, who made my buddy David Allan Coe look clean by the name of Jim Binns, also known as the Great Binnsinni. The Great Binnsinni not only played the spoons, but was a somewhat famous—or should I say infamous— tattoo artist, having put his work on Tanya Tucker and Jimmy Buffet among other celebrities.

  While these three guys were part of my Florida posse, they were also my Detroit posse. I say this because I was wrestling The Sheik at Cobo Hall in Detroit one night and these guys not only showed up at the airport to pick me up in a limousine to take me to the building, but after a near riot broke out right after our match, they got me the hell out of there unharmed by driving the limo right into the hall and escorting me out of there like Mafia bodyguards.

  To this day the Captain is still one of my closest friends as he is the man who kind of introduced me to one of my favorite musicians and now good friend, Willie Nelson.

  I was wrestling in Atlanta at the Omni on a Friday night—a sell-out— and the very next night Willie Nelson was scheduled to be in concert at the building, so Captain Lewis, Greg Troupe, another close friend who I’ll talk about in a moment, Michelle and I all decided to go to the concert. Before the show, however, the Captain, who knew one of Willie’s band members, made arrangements for us to meet. Well, when I was backstage, making my way around, we kind of just came across each other and began talking. The Captain, being the character he is, said, “Hey Willie, this is Dusty.” … He said this as after we’d already introduced ourselves to each other and were already talking! Anyway, I don’t know who was more excited to meet who, but as it turned out we were both big fans of each other and we just hit it off.

  You gotta love the Captain.

  So, not only did he “introduce” me to Willie, but he was also with me the night I decided to propose to Michelle.

  “Dusty and I were out drinking one night and he told me to make sure that no matter what happened that he should not call Michelle, because if he did, he was going to propose to her and he had already been married and divorced once. So every time he went to the pay phone to call her, I’d cut him off and make sure he didn’t. Well, eventually I had to go to the bathroom and by the time I came back out, it was too late. He had called and proposed.”

  —CAPTAIN LEWIS

  To this day I think he believes I actually proposed to her by telephone, but I didn’t. I did call her to tell her how much I loved her though, and that hasn’t changed. How could I not love a woman who has put up with me and my shit for more than 25 years?

  Anyway, aside from the Captain, Swain, and Binnsinni, Greg Troupe, who I mentioned before, was also a member of the posse. Greg was and is a real cowboy. I ain’t talking about an urban cowboy that you see up on a movie screen, I’m talking a flat-out Florida cracker cowboy … a real tough son of a bitch who spent some time on the rodeo circuit.

  Greg was around me during some crazy times, and this one night he brought this other cowboy friend of his along with us for a road trip from Tampa to Jacksonville. I figured this guy must be a tough son of a bitch like Greg, because why else would he bring him along? Now, there was a little bar that was also a barber shop, not too far from the Jacksonville Coliseum, where I always stopped to get my beer after the matches. This place was in a rough neighborhood, which kind of reminded me a little of where I grew up. Well, when they’d see me pulling into their parking lot, they would always party it up and they would go fucking crazy. So this one night, we stopped the vehicle and I said to Troupe, “This other guy doesn’t get out of the truck. I ain’t kidding. I ain’t got five minutes or I’ll be shooting you.”

  So I went in and come back out in a few minutes, get in the truck, and Willie Nelson is blaring on the fucking radio. As I got in and slammed the door, I looked over to the right and the same door that I just came out of, one guy comes out fighting with this woman and another guy comes up from behind her. I knew there might be some bad shit going down, so we took off.

  As we drove off, we thought we heard a gunshot. It could have been a car backfiring, but we talked ourselves into thinking it was a gunshot.

  So this cowboy, who’s never been around me and who came with Greg to go to the matches, didn’t say anything the whole 210-mile drive back home except, “I can’t believe that shit. I can’t fucking believe it.” He didn’t say anything else. Nothing! We didn’t see anything going down, but we could only imagine. Buddy, he was white as a ghost … scared to fucking death. For Greg, he was used to shit like that; just another night on the road.

  “The night Dusty met Willie Nelson, after we left the concert, he, Michelle, Captain Lewis and I went back to the hotel room and getting drunk on Jack Daniels, decided to give the Captain an earring by using a paperclip to make the hole. I haven’t seen the Captain in years, but the last time I did, he still had the earring.”

  —GREG TROUPE

  Rounding out the non-wrestling side of my posse was Danny Ellis, another cowboy and local Tampa rodeo guy, John “Sugar Bear” Berg, a local Tampa dirt track racer who did some time recently for trafficking, and of course later on, my buddy
David Allan Coe.

  David Allan was a notorious country outlaw musician. As many of you may remember, he played at many of the “Great American Bash” shows, which are what they were all about, wrestling and country music. I always thought his music was a lot like my wrestling. He not only wrote for Elvis Presley, George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and more recently Kid Rock, but he wrote “Take This Job and Shove It” for Johnny Paycheck, “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)?” for Tanya Tucker and had his own hits like “Longhaired Redneck,” “Jack Daniels If You Please,” and “Willie, Waylon and Me.” He even billed himself as “Davey Coe, the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy” performing in a mask and driving a hearse, which in a way was a lot like my Midnight Rider or Uvalde Slim personas.

  When I won the NWA World title from Ric Flair in the steel cage at the 1986 “Great American Bash” show in Greensboro, North Carolina, David Allan was the first one to hit the ring to congratulate me, even before “Magnum T.A.” Terry Allen.

  “I was a big fan of Dusty’s long before we went on tour together. Being in his posse was no different than when I was with Elvis, except there they called us the ‘Memphis Mafia.’ We’ve been friends for about 30 years now. When you’re always on the road, it’s not unusual to be around those types of people and to be in those situations. It’s a way of life.”

  —DAVID ALLAN COE

  From the wrestling side, there was Banny Rooster (Mike Graham), Barry Windham, Bobby “Black Jack” Mulligan, who was like my lieutenant, Dick Slater, and later on, Magnum. We had some crazy fucking times.

  At one point it seemed like the center of the wrestling universe, or at least my universe, was a little place called Yeehaw Junction, Florida, located on Highway 60 about midway between Tampa and West Palm Beach. I think more funny shit went down in Yeehaw Junction than anywhere else I can remember.

  One night, Black Jack, Barry, and I were heading home and just outside Yeehaw Junction, this guy had this shed on a field that had these donkeys. So, being drunker than shit, I got the brilliant idea that we should try to ride them. Well, they had a little too much in them too, and so they were all for it. So, here we go trying to get over or through the fence and I caught my balls right on the fence wire. Anyway, we got through the fence and onto the field. What a fucking picture that must have been. Can you imagine me, Barry and Black Jack late at night chasing after these mules in a field and trying to ride them?

  “The donkey kicked me in the chest and knocked me down, almost knocking me out. And then the guy that owned the place comes out and starts shooting a shotgun. We started running away, and as we’re going through the fence, Dusty catches his balls on the fence again; the look on his face was funny as hell.”

  —BLACK JACK MULLIGAN

  As funny as that was, it was really tame compared to some of the other shit that happened out there. One of the wildest stories out there involved Dick Slater, Louie Tillet, Paul LeDuc, Jos LeDuc, and me.

  This one night Slater was driving in my car and the other guys were following us in another car; it was pretty normal in the business for one car to follow another from town to town. Anyway, we were far enough in front of them that we pulled over to the side of the road and I took a small can of gasoline and poured it in a line right across the two-lane highway. We had our lights off and when they got close enough, I lit the gasoline and woosh … up went the flames right across the highway.

  Well, their car swerved, doing donuts and shit, going right past us and finally coming to a stop, dust flying up in the air, dirt being kicked everywhere. Well, like in the old west, we came driving up to the car real slowly alongside them and we were just laughing so fucking hard … Jos LeDuc jumped out of their car and he was so fucking scared and shaking so bad that he almost looked like a pale white … anyway I had the window down and had a wine bottle in my lap. Well, you know how things happen by instinct? There were no bad intentions or anything, but he just reached inside my window and slapped me in the face. It was like we were getting ready to fight. We were laughing and he slapped me in the face. So I took the wine bottle and I hit him right across the forehead with the fucking thing. When it hit him, he staggered to the front of the car and he was so mad, he jumped on the fucking hood.

  When he jumped on the hood, Slater took off, as in he hit the gas! So now we were driving down the fucking road … we were going about 30 miles an hour … and the “Canadian Freight Train,” Jos LeDuc, one of the strongest son of a bitches anywhere, was on the hood of our car looking right in at us. He had his hands where the hood comes up to meet the windshield and he had a death grip on it. Pretty soon though, Slater was going 60 … he was going 70 … we were going 70 fucking miles an hour with Jos LeDuc on the hood of the car looking in at us and his lips were now pressing against the windshield like one of those stick-on “Garfield” dolls and his eyes looked like a fish … he was all puckered up.

  We were laughing so fucking hard we finally came to a stop and when we did he rolled off the hood and into a ditch. Now here came the other car in behind us and Paul LeDuc and Tillet jumped out and ran over to Jos to pick him up, and by the time they got him up, man, he started laughing so hard, realizing what we all just did. But it was the funniest thing to see big Jos LeDuc on the hood like that.

  Highway 60 was notorious for shit like that. We always had our guns with us, and if we saw a guy who was taking a piss on the side of the car when coming back from a trip, we would come by and shoot the gun in the air … boom, boom, boom … to scare the shit out of them so they’d piss all over themselves. Well, this one time we came along and Banny had a bunch of the guys pulled off there, down by the ranch road. They were all naked and were going to moon us. Well I came back holding my gun out the window like I was gonna shoot and Banny was holding a beer bottle and daring me to fire. …

  “… and I said go ahead and see if you can shoot the fucking bottle from my hand. Well, Dusty points the gun and pulls the trigger and shoots into the air, but all the other guys hear the shot and take off into the field thinking he’s really shooting at us.”

  —MIKE GRAHAM

  Through the years the posse has changed quite a bit. The original posse was Murdoch and me, which was more of a pussy posse if you catch what I’m saying. There were also some people who wanted to be in the posse or thought they were in the posse, like “Beezer” Brian Blair and Steve Keirn, but they really weren’t. Even Flair to a degree wanted to be in the original posse with me and Hoyt.

  Back when Ric first started and weighed about 300 pounds, he was driving down the road with me, driving my car as I gave him a ride to the next town. He looked over at me and said, “I want to ask you a question … a big favor of you … I got my wrestling name, and if it’s okay with you I want to be a cousin. I want to be ‘Rambling’ Ricky Rhodes.”

  I said to him, “No! Make your own name. Be your own self. Make something of yourself in your own likeness of what you see … not ‘Rambling’ Ricky Rhodes.”

  Could you imagine if Flair would have been “Rambling” Ricky Rhodes all these fucking years … Jesus Christ!

  Thinking back, I don’t know when I had more fun than when I was on the road and hanging with my boys.

  “In Tampa, there’s a big bar called the Dallas Bull and in the early ‘80s when the movie Urban Cowboy came out, they were going to put these mechanical bulls in the place. Well, one night Dusty convinced the owner to let the wrestlers ride that thing before anybody else did. It was outside in the back of the place and these fucking things were still wrapped in the plastic they came shipped in. None of the boys were successful riding that thing; it threw everybody off and into the dirt.”

  —SIR OLIVER HUMPERDINK

  Sometimes memorable shit just happened without the posse being around or even involved, like this one time down in Key West. After one of the shows, all the boys went downtown with half the guys ending up in Captain Tony’s and the other half ending up in Sloppy Joe’s. All the babyfaces h
ung together and all the heels hung together. Well at one point in the evening we all came face to face right in front of Sloppy Joe’s. All the boys were right there, and so I drew a line with my foot on Duval Street and dared the heels to cross it. As somebody put it, we were way past sobriety at that point, and for about 30 minutes we had a Mexican standoff right in the middle of town. All sorts of people were in the street to see if this big-ass brawl would break out. Back then, that was great publicity for us. Think of how many people went home and told their family and friends, “You ain’t gonna believe the shit I saw on Duval Street last night.” Man, shit like that just doesn’t happen anymore, and if it did, nobody would believe it.

  Sometimes, however, it’s not all fun and crazy shit when it comes to the posse or the business in general. Sometimes it’s harsh reality; the kind that feels like a bull just gored you in the pit of your stomach. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to endure in the business is when Magnum had his auto accident. To see that happen to my brother was … gut wrenching.

  The call came in the morning. It was from his wife and she was crying. I dressed and headed to the hospital. As I arrived, I found that the world of Jim Crockett Promotions, the NWA and pro wrestling would be changed forever. The Golden Boy … the heir to the throne … had been paralyzed in an auto accident.

  Terry and I were very close. He became a member of the posse when I took him under my wing, because here was a kid who had it all from the good looks to the ability to that natural charisma, the one thing you can’t teach. He had been fucked by Buzz Sawyer, hard, and breaking into the business cost his family something like $60,000. Financially, it almost broke his family.