Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  In our industry really it’s about a very simple angle that I had thought up and shot that really was just a thing that I put in to generate something for television. I couldn’t come up with anything else and it turned out to this day to be one of the most asked questions besides “Who was the Midnight Rider?” and of course they smile after asking that question. So what was in the envelope that Baby Doll handed me in the Greensboro Coliseum?

  They say the dramatic look on my face even to this day was priceless because that was the only time somebody was able to get “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes to shut up. Right in the middle of my interview I clammed up tighter than John Kerry at a Swift Boat Vets reunion. It was probably one of the last true shoots in our industry where people believed what they saw was real, and they should believe it because it was the most heartless thing that anybody had ever done to me … it was unbelievable. It was unplanned. Tully put her up to it, I believe, and it was an unmerciful cowardly act by them.

  I remember it like it was yesterday, when she came out and handed the envelope to me on the interview, I thought it was like a rib but really couldn’t sell it like that, so I said to myself, “Okay, let me open up this and look inside. …” the picture that I saw was the most phenomenal thing. … Until this day even the boys ask me what was in that envelope. So knowing all that and what it means to everybody, I think to keep them on a good square level knowing what can really happen if the things are done right, I don’t think anybody will ever know what was in that envelope unless Baby Doll tells you … and I don’t see that happening.

  “I still have the envelope … the angle was going to be over a couple of weeks. I was going to reveal pictures that would expose him. Now Dusty was married and was faithful, the whole nine yards and all that, but the premise of it was that I busted him in a hotel room with another woman. And every week I was going to show a little more and a little more, like the hotel and all that. They even thought of having a video of me walking through a hotel room with maybe hearing giggling and laughing in the background and then seeing Dusty’s legs intertwined with another woman’s legs. And then it was going to be a little more pictures, a little more pictures, but to add even more to it, it was supposed to be a black woman. Every week it was supposed to be a little more. Maybe clothes thrown on the floor, jeans up on the couch or something, and then I’d bust him and his wife would bust him and it would be quite a soap opera. It turned out they didn’t like it, because my husband at the time, Sam Houston, was working for the WWF and I was working for Turner and they felt it was too much of a conflict of interest, because on my days off I would fly out to be with him and they wanted me to be very exclusive. Dusty always wanted me portrayed as this Marilyn Monroe figure, very single, very available, and being married didn’t fit in with that. So what I ended up having in the envelope were some really goofy pictures of him. There’s a picture of him copping a feel in a hotel lobby on a Venus de Milo statue with this goofy look on his face, then there was a photo of Dusty and either a security guard or a policewoman where it looks like he’s giving her a bribe. Then there’s one of him with this rainbow clown wig on with Groucho Marx glasses and nose. They’re just these goofy pictures. It was my idea to deliver the envelope and I took it upon myself to do it because I always liked that little bit of mystery of was it a work or was it real.”

  —NICKLA ROBERTS, AKA “BABY DOLL”

  So when I got into the back and away from the camera, I laughed my ass off, because that’s exactly what it really was, a fucking rib that was played on me. But to this day it played like a shoot, because in my mind that’s how I had to play it. Back then you never broke kayfabe, ever, no matter what. You learned how to roll with the flow and that’s how we took a rib and made it into an angle that was talked about for more than 20 years. And I can guarantee you that some of the people who were there, some of the wrestlers who saw it, will read this and still think we are working them on this, because it really was that good.

  “What was interesting about the whole thing with Baby Doll, is that originally it wasn’t supposed to be Nickla, it was supposed to be Sunshine, who worked with me out in Texas. She was supposed to be the perfect 10, but looking back that never would have worked as well. We were lucky we couldn’t find her and ended up with Nickla, because she was the only person who could have pulled all that off the way it was.”

  —TULLY BLANCHARD

  Speaking of working, the man we called the devil, Kevin Sullivan, is the type of person who after being in the wrestling business all these years thinks everything is a work. We drew more money in a time when the house you drew was the thing that drove our business. His mind in the world of pro wrestling was tremendous. We had our run-ins both in and out of the ring, but I really enjoy him now. Over the years he had some Sheik-type ideas and we fed off of each other. There was nothing more exciting than the ref being knocked out and the devil reaching into his box and pulling out the golden spike, driving it deep into my chest area, as I went down. The crowd in that white, cold, silent heat is a memory that still wakes me up screaming in a cold sweat and looking into the fucking darkness, and after a while I smile. I think, whoa! It’s show time. He might have been the best. He was a devil and I was “The American Dream.” He was the antichrist and I was the savior. It was good versus evil at its very core.

  >

  “When I came to Florida, Dusty had no intentions of working with me. I went out and cut an interview that there was no ‘American Dream.’ People were in gas lines, there were hostages in Iran and interest rates were high. I said there was no such thing as ‘The American Dream’ and that Dusty’s hoodwinking the people. I said you can’t afford the B.S. he’s giving you. I thought of that promo for two weeks. Dusty blew right by me and proceeded to give a rebuttal. He booked it. That Sunday we had a good house and it went from there.”

  —KEVIN SULLIVAN

  Kevin was a weird guy. He was not big in stature but he was a tough fucker and he always had a group of people with him, an entourage— snakes, and belly dancers, fire-eating dragons and shit—and Abudadein. He had all these fucking people around that I could kick their ass but I could never kick his ass, kind of like the super villain who would always get away at the end of the movie, even though all of the other bad guys had been caught or killed. And he had a cult following of these people who would follow him from town to town sometimes. When he would do an interview, Eddie would get close but not too close and would be concerned with what he said on that interview because he believed Kevin was the devil. But when he would say it I would tell Eddie it’s okay because I had a rebuttal and I would make them know that he’s just saying that … but maybe he is.

  In Orlando, Sullivan had a group of ten to 15 people, mystics, who came down from Casadega, Florida, who would follow him—as they would follow Jim Jones who gave the people Kool-Aid to drink and they all fucking died— that’s the way these people followed Kevin. They had a van with his name on it and all the peace signs, crosses and other stuff, and they would drive to this place they parked on the Fairgrounds inside a big fence, and once you had it parked, you couldn’t get out. Now of course, the local cowboys and Indians, the blacks and the browns, the amigos were my people in Florida. I was the pickup truck guy who the cowboys thought was the second coming of John Wayne. They didn’t give a fuck, so the devil was the only guy that on Christmas night turned Santa Claus into a heel at the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg. When I left the building that night, people were standing what looked like two, three thousand deep, screaming to hang Santa Claus! It was Christmas night and they had the kids with them who just got presents that morning, and they wanted to kill Santa Claus.

  As part of the promotion, Eddie had five or six Santa Clauses during the night for the kids circulating through the building. Well the fans soon found out that one of the Santa Clauses was actually one of Kevin’s disciples. Jake Roberts had dressed in a Santa suit and, passing the security guards, he knocked me on m
y ass to help Kevin beat “The American Dream” on Christmas night; starting the biggest feud in the history of our business in Florida that’s still going on today. But on that night it was like a riot. It was a bad Saint Nick that people wanted … they wanted somebody to kick that shit out of old Saint Nick!

  “When we did the loser leaves town match in Orlando and I beat Dusty on Christmas, he came back as the Midnight Rider and beat me … and then I came back under a mask as Lucifer and we did that for a while. Dusty understood good versus evil. Years later when the Sheik was 59 years old, we did a Starrcade in Detroit and we made a bet that we could do a double switch during the tag-team match between Dusty and the Sheik versus me and Dick Murdoch to where the Sheik would turn heel and Murdoch would turn babyface. We pulled it off.”

  —KEVIN SULLIVAN

  So Sullivan had a knack for doing stuff like that and he was also the only guy I beat in a bull rope match that didn’t go off his feet! It’s hard to pin that little bastard, that little stiff fucker, when he won’t come out of the corner. So you had to put yourself in a position to be creative. I had the referee count the turnbuckle! I crawled up in the corner and cross-bodied him like I would cover him on the mat and the referee went one, two, three.

  “All this B.S. about Dusty being an egomaniac … he did a job in the middle of the ring for me. He knew when to do it. When it made sense.”

  —KEVIN SULLIVAN

  Anyway, that Santa Claus thing in St. Pete really ignited the feud, and so getting back to that group in Orlando, one night we had drawn a big house and I was showering and I heard fire trucks and there’s only a one-lane road getting out of there. There were people running, screaming and shit, about to fall over each other. These cowboys who came to Orlando knew every week where these guys from Casadega would park their van, and so they torched it after the match, they lit it up! They burned it to the ground in the parking lot while these goofs stood around it in a semi-circle as if watching a cross burn. Burned it to the fucking ground, buddy. They believed it was real.

  And this is all after Kevin, Molokai, and Demetrius had won. But where were these fucking people he named? They beat the fuck out of me, stretching me out and laying out Black Jack Mulligan, too. Molokai of course was Gene Lewis, but Kevin would change their names to go with his gimmick, to go with his character; that’s how Mark Lewin became the Purple Haze, how Bob Roop became Mayhar Singh, how Nancy Sullivan became the Fallen Angel, and how Angel Vachon became Luna.

  This was a perfect example of something that I talked about earlier in the book where there were no shades of gray, because on that night for two and a half hours after the bell rung, it was all black and white for you to get excited about.

  I remember this other night in Orlando when I was in the ring with Molokai. During my match Kevin and Black Jack started fighting in the back, fought their way through the crowd, fought at ringside, fought in the ring, fought out on the other side of the ring, and fought right out the front door of the building. One week later, I was in the ring again with Molokai in a return match, the front opened and here came Kevin and Bobby Jack fighting into the arena. This old guy sitting at ringside said, “Goddamn, they’ve been fighting a whole fucking week!”

  That feud obviously was classic, and Sullivan became a very good booker out of it. Like the Sheik, he lived his gimmick. He had a great vision. He had great ideas, and I really felt proud because I believe he learned a lot from me, and I, in turn, learned a lot from him. But he watched me closely earlier on in my career and he became a heel who drew money. That’s what manipulating people and things and territories is all about. God, we had a big feud, and given the opportunity, it would still be going on today.

  “I’ve never thanked Dusty. I wouldn’t have had a career like I had or have everything I have without Dusty giving me the opportunity to wrestle him, and because of the track record to get the rub with Hulk. I wouldn’t have done the things with Abby and the Sheik. I thank him!”

  —KEVIN SULLIVAN

  A guy who was similar to Kevin in a lot of ways was Larry Shreve, better known as Abdullah the Butcher. Abdullah was a guy everyone was scared to death of and they still are today. If you ever watch the History Channel about the Haitians, they have these Voodoo dancers who go into trances and they pass out and fall down and they just go crazy. Well, one night as we fought in the West Palm Beach Auditorium, we fought out to the back of the building. There would be a lot of Haitians who came to the matches there, and a group of them were out in the back and they were the kind of Haitians who were worshipers. Well, Abdullah got away from me and he ran up on this group of people and they threw themselves into a fit just like you see on the History Channel and they got in a circle around him and they started doing all this shit. I was watching this unfold in front of me and they started passing out on the fucking floor. They just started laying out doing these weird gyrations and shit. As a heel, he had that kind of power over people. He had that knack like the Sheik, like Sullivan, that you believed this fucking guy was a bad motherfucker and still is. And heavy—Jesus—he must weigh 900 pounds! Today, while he still wrestles, he’s a successful businessman in Atlanta with “Abdullah’s House of Chinese Food and Ribs,” but there’s only one Abdullah the Butcher, and our feuds in Atlanta were … shit it’s one of them if you want to sell out, that’s what you booked before Yellow Finger— you booked Abdullah and Dusty in Georgia. The mysterious person you see is who he was, and almost like the Sheik, he lived the gimmick. The only time I saw him out of character was down at the Underground nightclub one night. They told me Abdullah went down to this club after I wrestled him in the Auditorium. That was the night the lady fell out of the balcony to get a glimpse of “The American Dream,” and he danced like a son of a bitch, so I went down to this African-American club, and I walked in, and there he was. He looked like a big, black, Sidney Greenstreet, the guy you see in those old movies. Abdullah had on a white suit and a big, white Panama hat and everybody around him was black and he was out on the dance floor dancing his ass off. And that’s what I think about now when I think of Abdullah. Dressing nice and classy, but everyone was scared of him and they still are. Larry was a bad ass and still is.

  A couple of years ago, the most fun I had in a long, long time was when Terry Funk, Kevin Sullivan, Abdullah and I did this four-way brawl in Davie, Florida, for a local promoter down there. About 4,500 people showed up at the Davie Rodeo Arena for this independent show, which was really unheard of, just to see the four of us kick the shit out of each other, and we did not disappoint the fans. I love those type of things because it was just so simple. There was no rocket science there that night, just four old fuckers beating the piss out of each other and loving every minute of it.

  Wahoo McDaniel was like the first guy I really marked out for. He was an Indian from Oklahoma like my dad, and he had more fire in him than anybody else I had seen. His fire on his comebacks was just phenomenal and you believed in him. I was at this gas station in Canyon, Texas, at West Texas State University once and he stopped in on his way from Amarillo going to the next town for a match. He had a new Mustang at the time—a ‘66 or ‘67—and he got out and he was wearing this orange alpaca sweater, a really nice sweater with a turtleneck. Man, he looked immaculate, and I thought to myself he must have $20 million in the bank—that’s the way my mind worked back then. He took me in, he grabbed me, he brought me into that realm and made it real. This guy lived his gimmick and what I’ve been talking about all throughout the book. He got out of the car as Wahoo McDaniel, he didn’t get out of the car as Ed McDaniel, the former New York Jets football player. He was Wahoo McDaniel, the pro wrestler and he was at the gas station. To me it was like the fucking Beatles were here. He just drove up in a fucking Mustang instead of a yellow submarine, and that’s important because it was about believability. He was a good-hearted guy and a tough guy, too. He did some unbelievable stuff athletics-wise, that people still talk about him doing, like running from Norma
n, Oklahoma, to Oklahoma City, 18 miles or whatever it is on a bet with Bill Watts and taking on all comers. I had a lot of respect for him. I loved the guy and enjoyed being with him as he was kind of a father figure to me because he reminded me of my dad a little bit the way he looked, dark, and he had that face kind of like my dad. He wasn’t that much older than me, but he was kind of like a father figure.

  Wahoo bought me a real nice shotgun one time, and I went dove hunting with him. He was one of those pre-Yellow Finger guys, and to watch his early matches would be a study in how to get “over.” In the end fans remembered the old, worn-out Wahoo, but that’s not him. It’s just like when Sitting Bull kicked the shit out of Custer at Little Big Horn, massacred him by the overwhelming numbers. Well, I imagine a few years later, Sitting Bull was a little heavier and wasn’t really the same Sitting Bull. So you can’t really look at Wahoo at the end of his career, you have to look at it as a whole. As a matter of fact, he did a lot of “Dusty Finishes” during his career. I was sad when he died because I not only respected him, but he was one of my idols.

  Dallas Page is a real friend. He works harder than anyone I know to be the very best he can be. He has a very impressive attitude. I think Dallas in a way is an example of doing anything you put your mind to, because he proved everybody wrong who said he couldn’t work. In the beginning, he really couldn’t. Dallas couldn’t do anything. He had no coordination whatsoever. But he worked hard to obtain it and he made history in winning the WCW title for a guy who became an overachiever. He really overachieved and he tried so hard to be in that little clique of guys.

  I enjoyed watching him just as he was breaking out, battling Arn Anderson, Ric Flair, and company, who would try to keep him down. We had a real close relationship then as we still do today. We talk about our business of course, but we also talk about our personal lives. He has a real ability to stay focused and positive. In Fort Myers, Florida, one time, I invited him to a Willie Nelson concert. Chelle and I met him there and he was pumped as he took pictures of Willie and me on stage together; he was like a celebrity mark! Little did I know that he took the pictures to put in his resume for later use. He reminded me of “Rambling” Dallas Rhodes. Well, he proved himself, and we are very close. I still was really pissed off when he had Hogan write the foreword for his book—big mistake! Anyway, I got fucking over it! Dallas became a megastar in pro wrestling. Hard work and trusting his instincts paid off.