Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  Turner was sitting there behind the desk when I walked in, and for some reason I had worn a suit. I kind of looked like Willie Nelson in the suit, completely out of place. But I wore it because Barnett thought that was the way I should go in there.

  Contrary to what people believe, I had suits. I owned suits. I got rid of them. I had $1,500 - $ 2,000 suits that I got rid of a few years ago and Michelle looked at me like I was crazy because I went to the closet and took them all out and went down to Goodwill and gave them away because I wear jeans and boots, or I go barefooted and I wear T-shirts with my belly sticking out. It does not matter, that’s the way I am. But I can dress up if I need to. This particular time, however, I wore this blue polyester suit I had made for me in Japan when I toured there with Dick Murdoch.

  So Ted was sitting behind the desk. His baseball team was as about as bad as you can get by putting nine guys out on the field. He even became a coach that year for one game. They had a slugger named Bob Horner, and everybody would mistake him for me. If he went out to eat —this is how hot we were—they would call him Dusty Rhodes … their third baseman who hit four home runs in one game. And he said, “They [the Braves] don’t have any charisma. They can’t put people in the stands.”

  I thought, “Winning puts them in the stands.” I didn’t want to say it to him at that point, because we got winners and losers, not business. So I said seats are 17 inches, now they’re a little bit wider, but I said you want to put an asshole every 17 inches, that’s the bottom line. And we agreed on that, so we knew where we were going.

  But I went in there to ask him to get me commercials. Which I thought—this is how we were—I didn’t know how powerful he was. I thought he did the marketing too. I wanted him to get me commercials and be my agent.

  This is fucking Ted Turner, right?

  So he looks at me and he said to me, of all people, “You ever been on the cover of Sports Illustrated?”

  I said, “No, sir.” So, without even blinking an eye, I said, “Have you ever been on the cover of Pro Wrestling Illustrated?”

  He said, “No.” Then he said, just like that, “Fuck, I’m looking for commercials. I want to do commercials. You’re in here wanting me to get you fucking commercials.”

  So I kind of figured out what was going on at this point and there was nothing going to happen out of this conversation.

  Ten, 15 years later he bought Jim Crockett Promotions, which at that time controlled the NWA, because really they were the only ones left aside from one or two other promoters. On the cover of Pro Wrestling Illustrated is a picture of Ted Turner. All this time had passed—that’s how I knew he was a no-bullshit guy because he remembers conversations—that’s what makes him good … he walked all the way across the atrium at CNN center, walked across it like a common fan with a wrestling magazine in his hand to stick it in my face.

  In 2002, in Sports Illustrated, there was a picture and a quote and a paragraph on Dusty Rhodes, “The American Dream.” It was a Q&A session. I went to Tallahassee, Florida, looking for the motherfucker because I was going to show him this fucking picture. As luck would have it, two of his kids were on the plane with me. These days he’s down in Tallahassee and a lot of people don’t know that, so his kids say, “We’re going out to Dad’s, do you want to go?”

  I said, “Take this Sports Illustrated and right at the appropriate time, show him this picture.”

  It’s funny how things transpire. Visions different men have. … Turner is the greatest visionary of our lifetime. No one can compare to him. Without him we would have been shit as far as the wrestling industry in the South.

  And I can always remember, “Hi, I’m Tommy Rich, and I’ll be in Carrollton tonight. …” and it would be packed. Ted Turner gave us that opportunity. I’ll always thank him for that.

  But I wish he would have been my manager like I wanted him to be the day I walked into his office. Ted was a cool guy. He sold out, but I don’t think he sold out as much as the company’s board of directors sold out.

  The only thing was Ted sent Bill Shaw in to be the president of WCW, a guy who did not know jack shit about wrestling. I believe he was in charge of human resources before coming to WCW. That’s almost as funny as Bill Bush. I liked Bill Shaw, and Eric Bischoff should kiss his ass every time he sees him, because Bill Shaw put Eric in power because he knew he couldn’t handle the job himself. But that’s the way Ted hired. He had somebody overseeing and regulating what we were doing.

  The only thing I got hot at Turner about was that he sent Bill Shaw to oversee all of his land holdings and buffalo out west. Hell, that would have been a perfect job for me. All he had to do was give me a pick-up truck and a million a year like Bill Shaw was getting and send me out to fucking Montana and I’d have been gone, nobody’d even hear from me —it’d been cool.

  So Shaw hired Eric, who was a visionary in his own right, and he turned WCW into something very special.

  But before he hired Eric, there was Jim Herd, a marketing guy or something like that who came from Pizza Hut, who was the blooming idiot of corporate America. Now I know I said I wasn’t going to bury people who I feel have done me wrong or who I may not like personally, but this guy was never really in the wrestling business, so he is fair game. That said, he was the most untalented motherfucker in the history of the world, whether you were running pizza, whether you were running a road race, or whether you were running to the fucking bathroom. He had the least talent of any human being that I had ever been around in my life; he had no gamesmanship and no skills at all as far as employees went. I say that a lot, but I liked him outside of the business when he wasn’t drinking with Jim Ross after each day was over, where they would have their cocktails and Jim was pointing him on the floor because he knew how to play Herd like a fiddle. We know Jim’s pretty smart, and to this day JR is a cool guy as all he wanted was my job, and what’s wrong with that? He made no bones about it, and I respected him for that. Since then I think JR’s fallen from grace a little bit.

  I don’t think any announcer stands up to him. We used to say Gordon was the best and he was the king, but JR is the best man to get if I was going to get someone to call a world’s title match and everybody was equal, age-wise, at the same time, Jim Ross would be my chosen guy to go to war with.

  So I had nine bosses when I went back to being the corporate cowboy, and each of them were bosses who came from the other floor that knew nothing about the industry.

  Kip Frye was probably my favorite, as I understand he’s become a millionaire out in Los Angeles in the video business, but at the time he was well … an unusual choice.

  They got rid of Herd. Bill Watts blew into town with both six guns blazing and they got rid of him, and I think Ole Anderson was there one time earlier, and then there was Bill Bush, who was an income tax guy who was running our business, who made J.J. Dillon and Gary Juster his big buddies … and if I was running the Montana stuff, I would’ve put all three of them shoveling shit out there during that point in time. There was also Bob Dhue who ran the Omni. He’d book the Omni for us like, “Hello, I’d like to book the Omni,” and they’d say, “Okay, sure!” That’s what he did. But getting back to Kip Frye, they went over to the 12 floor on other side of the complex, the north tower where all the big wigs with Turner were, and Jack Petrick, I believe, one of the big lieutenants for Turner all of those years— respected by Ted because he knew how to delegate and what he had to do in his own frame, but another person who knew nothing of the wrestling business—they’re passing a room and Jack says, “Hey what’s your name?” As he looks in this room, Kip Frye is putting videotapes in sleeves to ship out. “Are you interested in wrestling?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay, you’re the president of WCW. Get your shit together and go over to the office.” And they brought him over. “Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce the new president of WCW, Kip Frye.” That’s exactly how Kip Frye became the president of WCW.


  The first thing he did was change the show that had been the legendary cornerstone of TBS at 6:05 p.m. for forever. Jim Ross hated it, and the only reason I went along with Kip Frye was because Ross hated it so bad … he made it WCW Saturday Night, like the Saturday night show and half of the two hours was a talk-show format with Jim Ross interviewing people like the group Alabama or whoever would be there, nothing to do with wrestling whatsoever. He had a vision and went on to make that happen, but he was out of place, he didn’t know, and that’s the kind of people who were being hired. It was boss after boss after boss, and you never knew where the head of this corporate jackass was as you always got to talk to the ass.

  “Jack Petrick was looking for someone to come in to run WCW. Dusty was the booker when they called me to come in to talk. The Braves were in the World Series, so I brought Jeff with me for the meeting. Jack took Jeff and me to the ball game. Dusty was sitting in the same section, but up in the cheap seats. Every time I’d come back from the restroom or concession stands, Dusty would be in Jack’s ear. After talking throughout the game about wrestling, I told Jack that his wrestling company would fail unless he made radical changes in management conditions. I also told him that his best bet was to keep Dusty Rhodes. Of course Dusty thought I was coming in to take his job. He didn’t realize that I wanted his boss’ job, so he wore a trail out to Jack’s ear. When I left before the game ended, I stopped and whispered in his ear, ‘Dusty, you’re the only person alive that has a chance to make this go. God bless you.’ I then kissed him on the cheek. Dusty thought I gave him the Mafia ‘Kiss of Death.’”

  —JERRY JARRETT

  It goes back to why Vince McMahon is so successful, and that is because even though they are a publicly traded company, it’s still a family-run business. When their business is down like it is right now as I write this, they go back home and on Sundays they sit down and they think about their business. This is our livelihood. How do we make this business work? It’s like Vince stepping out into other things like bodybuilding, falling on his ass … XFL, falling on his ass … but he had a vision and he went ahead and did it even though he was out of his element. He thought he could make football players into wrestlers as far as marketing was concerned.

  WCW kind of went like that. There were some down times and good times, and it was hard work, but somebody was always trying to screw somebody else and the biggest problem was they went to the contract system to where Hogan was making more money than Greg Maddux. That’s a for instance. And they looked at it like that. It’s a team over here; Hogan’s making more money than Greg Maddux. They spent a lot of money—not on Hogan because he was well worth the price of admission to anything he ever did—but a lot of guys went through that company, got their money and there was nothing put back into the company, and the business started to change.

  Although he really wasn’t a part of it anymore during that time, Turner would always ask about wrestling. He knew when it was doing well and when it wasn’t. The story of the things that happened there … the intrigue of what went on daily I think needs to be a book on its own as it would be an amazing read to uncover all the bodies that are buried there.

  CHAPTER 10

  While many people will remember my time at Jim Crockett Promotions or World Championship Wrestling as being perhaps my most successful in the business, in between my several stops there, I always returned to Florida—my home away from home—because I knew I could make a living there. After all, the Sunshine State was where I had some of my biggest runs with men like Harley Race, Terry Funk, and Kevin Sullivan.

  There was also a time in between my WCW stops that I sucked up my pride, got a little humbled, and went to work for VKM’s “Evil Empire,” wearing those damn polka dots.

  I know this keeps coming up over and over, but the “business is business” statement that Eddie Graham first taught me is not only a statement that rings true in so many aspects of the wrestling business, but really in life, too. Like in other jobs, you often have to put your personal feelings aside for the sake of business. You don’t have to like someone to do business with them— you just have to respect them for their abilities. It’s kind of like the family member who you love, but you just don’t like.

  At one point I went back to Florida and joined this group called the PWF, Pro Wrestling Federation. I had just finished one of my runs with WCW and it was right before the polka dot era. While I of course wanted the PWF to be successful, in the back of my mind I always looked at it and my other brief stops back in Florida like they were a hiatus between the movies I made; with the movie scripts being my big wrestling creations. The fact of the matter is by the time I got there the company was already in deep financial debt and none of the partners—Mike Graham, Steve Keirn, or Gordon Solie—really had any serious money to reinvest back into the company, and that really disenchanted me with the whole thing.

  I brought a friend of mine by the name of Randy Roberts in with me who had a strong business background in casino management with Caesar’s Tahoe and corporate startups; with the hope that we could turn Florida back around. But we just couldn’t do it. We didn’t fail for lack of trying, however. We ran the office and television right back out of the old CWF office at 106 North Albany in Tampa, home of the famous and sometimes infamous Sportatorium. We were on the air all over the state —Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando—and we ran the towns weekly like we did in the heyday, trying to recapture the old lightning in a bottle. Everybody involved busted their ass to make that venture work, but the bolt never struck.

  “One thing about Dusty that everyone would probably agree with me is he is an extremely creative person. He has a great imagination. He has a great perceptual view of things and their outcomes and he has great vision because of that … and he also took that to a business standpoint and he would recommend something if it looked like it was going to be a good business deal or not. Along with that creativity, from a business standpoint, he also had a very keen awareness of what was good business, what would work well and what wouldn’t work well.”

  —RANDY ROBERTS, FORMER BUSINESS PARTNER

  At one point I really believe Vince was scared of what we were trying to do because he thought we had big money behind us and that we were going to break out with something really special. He even sent Bobby Heenan up to the office one day to snoop around.

  “Hey, I was just in town and wanted to know how you are doing. …”

  I like Bobby a lot, but in all the times he’d come to Tampa, it was the only time he came by to see how we were doing. It was definitely one of those sniff around things, and Vince would do that to me like I was stupid. I only told Bobby what I wanted him to hear, though, knowing he would go back to Vince and repeat what I had said. Not a knock on Bobby, as he knew where his bread was buttered, but it was really like a big chess game between me and Vince, and I kept my king and queen well hidden.

  That’s when the next movie script came in for me to go back to work for Vince, but without thinking I said, “No.” He even said he would pay me for the territory and I said it wasn’t worth it, but again I wasn’t thinking. It was actually worth more money than he was offering. Looking back on the offer, I should have taken it. I was an idiot.

  “Dusty has a passion for the business and an obsession to be successful. ‘The Dream’ always treated me respectfully and fairly and I don’t recall ever having a harsh word with him even though we did not always agree on creative direction. What can you expect? He’s a Longhorn and I’m a Sooner.”

  —JIM ROSS

  But I eventually left Florida when we couldn’t make the PWF work, went to New York and for a year and a half “The American Dream” was put on hold as “The Common Man,” Dusty Rhodes, took center stage in my life.

  Vince always had his own vision of things, and if you look at his company and the characterizations of people throughout the years, you’d see that he had such a great marketing group that they figured out before anyone els
e that they could make more money per night on marketing T-shirts and dolls and yellow fingers than they could make at the box office, which on some summer nights they proved.

  So in his mind everybody had to have a place, and I couldn’t be “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes, because he didn’t think of that characterization, and he was like me in the sense that if he didn’t think of it, he would change it; which was why I was very, very surprised that he used The Great American Bash in 2004, which actually really pissed me off because that was one of my creations along with Starrcade, The Crockett Cup and others. These were my shows. I created them before the pay-per-view era, and if you look at it this way, they were my movies, and I don’t like my movies to be butchered or fucked with. You don’t take a movie classic like Psycho from a master like Alfred Hitchcock and colorize it. Okay so he bought all of those creations of mine when he bought WCW, but he didn’t even send me any money for it and he should have, because it’s like me being a songwriter and selling a song for $50 because I really needed the money at the time and all of a sudden you sell about a hundred million records … so it pisses me off. He could’ve been good about it and thrown me two or three hundred grand and I would have been happy. I would have kept quiet about it, but he didn’t, so now it’s in the book.

  So anyway, getting back on track here, if he didn’t think of it, you didn’t exist, even though your new character might be just like your old persona.

  Really, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he would do that, because all of those other guys who had had gotten there before me like the Funks and Harley, their histories were cast aside, too. For God’s sake, Vince turned Dory Funk Jr. into “Hoss Funk” and created a third Funk brother named “Jimmy Jack” who was actually former Florida champion Jesse Barr in a fucking Lone Ranger mask. What the fuck were they thinking there? So it stood to reason that if they would do that to those guys, “The American Dream” wasn’t going to see the light of day in the “Evil Empire.”