by Dusty Rhodes
“What the fuck. …”
She began to tell them what happened. I just let it go in one ear and out the other. Holy shit, I was embarrassed in a bad way.
The rest of the night was a blur.
Early in the morning we headed back to Austin. We made it home late Sunday night. Not much was said coming back as we mostly slept. But the trip to Mexico was not talked about again except only between the four of us … until now.
For those of you wondering, I have purposely kept the names of my amigos out of this story because I think one of them ended up marrying that whore.
So now every time I see someone splashing water in a bowl, the visions of that trip to Mexico vividly come back and I can’t help do anything but smile.
How was that for tits and ass?
CLOSING NOTES
From Howard Brody
When Dusty first told me he was signing a deal with Sports Publishing to write his life story, I literally offered to do it for free. What a mark, huh?
At first he was a bit hesitant, because at that point our relationship was seeded more in business than in friendship. But the more I tried to sell him on the idea, the more he accepted it, because he wanted someone to write about those things that only people inside the business could understand and interpret properly.
Although we had a great deal of respect for each other, it wasn’t until I began working with Dusty on the book that our friendship was solidified.
It was also during this time that we began formulating the context in which Dusty’s story would be told. Would we do it as a straight-up biography with names and dates and facts and figures? Or would we tell the story as if Dusty were riding down the road with a good friend and just saying what was on his mind? We chose the latter.
To know the Dream is to understand him. And what better way to understanding is there than locking yourself in a room with one of the greatest minds in the history of the business? We decided that the best way to tell his story was to let him say what he needed to say in the manner he was accustomed—idiosyncrasies and all.
Because the challenge was to ensure that Dusty’s voice and demeanor— and not that of a writer—came through loud and clear, it meant the difficult decision to allow certain things to be told and certain things to be left out. It was a hard choice, but if the essence of Dusty was to be properly captured, that’s just what had to be done, because that’s the way he conducts himself when telling his stories. So all the blue talk, the tall tales, the “if you wills,” and the purposeful omissions of why he felt J.J. Dillon screwed him and how his feud with Ric Flair became legendary were all calculated decisions.
When I brought up the fact that he needed to address the sexual exploits of the business, suggesting that more T&A needed to be revealed in the book, or that he needed to address the infamous “Dusty Finish” somewhere between the front and back cover, Dusty responded with a very tongue-in-cheek, very ribald Epilogue that addressed both issues. It was his way of acknowledging the need to explain both, but doing so only in the fashion he felt appropriate. It wasn’t ducking or sidestepping the issues, but rather his way of “working the work”—perpetuating the larger-than-life legend that is Dusty Rhodes.
After several months of discussion, planning, writing, and rewriting, the hardcover version finally hit the stores and made its way into the hands of readers. And when reviews began pouring in, something fascinating happened. We learned that if you loved Dusty, you loved the book. If you hated him, you hated the book. There was no gray area, only good or bad— it was all very black and white.
Much of the criticism I felt was unwarranted. For every review that disliked the chapter on how Dusty would book Starrcade Prime or the chapter dedicated to and written by his fans, there were two reviews that loved them because they were genuine. There was also criticism of a love-fest between Dusty and those who provided comments throughout the book, because nobody criticized Dusty.
When I first began gathering comments from people, Dusty’s edict was that nothing would be edited out. “If they say good things about me or if they say bad things about me, it has to go in as is,” he ordered.
Well, while Tully Blanchard partially criticized Dusty for not listening to others, I couldn’t get one other person to say anything negative about him— and believe me, I tried. While Dusty gave me a list of about 10 people to speak to, I ended up interviewing a lot more. I even placed calls to members of the Crockett family to get their side of the story as to what caused the demise of Jim Crockett Promotions. Without exception, I called Jackie, David, and even Jim Crockett, Jr. himself, leaving detailed messages of why I was calling, and not one of them returned any of my calls. The only one I did not call was the sister, Frances.
Quite frankly, the only things Dusty took an eraser to in regard to other people’s comments were some remarks made by his son Dustin about ex-wife Terri (aka Marlena). Even though Dusty might have agreed with his son’s comments, he felt the strong language could potentially hurt the feelings of his granddaughter Dakota, and he wasn’t about to let that happen.
Of all the people I contacted, aside from the Crocketts, only a handful declined to comment or didn’t bother to respond. They were: Hulk Hogan, who simply ignored the request because … well, probably because he’s Hulk Hogan; Linda McMahon, who wrote in an e-mail at the time, “I did not know Dusty very well and had very little interaction with him while he was here”; Vince McMahon, who cited a potential conflict of interest with WWE’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, should he provide a comment; and Paul Heyman, who said he wanted to comment, but couldn’t officially, because he didn’t want to get into trouble with Vince at the time. However, he did write in an e-mail: “I would LOVE to tell the story of how Dusty gave me a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE break in WCW, and then was removed as booker/lead writer … everyone turned their back on him … but I refused to at Starrcade, because he had given me the chance of a lifetime and upset a lot of people by doing it. I would be happy to tie that in to his ECW tenure, as I truly believe in my heart I owed him, and even though bringing him into ECW was ‘re-paying him,’ he contributed more to ECW than we could ever compensate him for.”
Overall, working with Dusty on Reflections was a fantastic educational experience for me. To say he is a character is an understatement, and some of our interactions working on the book were classic in their own right, perhaps even worthy of making it onto these pages.
One of the last times we got together to work on the book face-to-face, I drove from my then-home in Charlotte, North Carolina, to his home in Marietta, Georgia. When I arrived, I moved my overnight bag to his pickup truck for the long drive from the Peach State to Pensacola, Florida, where Dusty would judge a karaoke contest in his name to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The roundtrip drive would give us a good 12 hours together.
We left his home and made the first pit stop about 100 miles down the road to get a snack. As I went for my wallet to pay for my drink, I realized I had left it, and subsequently all my cash, in the glove compartment of my car; I had taken the wallet out of my pants pocket when I had last stopped for gas. So, for the rest of the weekend, Dusty had to go into his pocket to pay for whatever I needed. He was quick to let whoever we came in contact with know of my forgetfulness.
Aside from hearing some great road stories, I not only learned Dusty had driven this route hundreds of times previously when doing WCW television, but that he knew all the lyrics to the theme of the TV show Green Acres, as he sang it for hours on end as we passed miles and miles of farm “land spreadin’ out so far and wide…”
I learned that Dusty could pull a hell of a rib if he wanted to. When the karaoke contest was finished, we called it a day and stayed overnight at one of his sister’s Pensacola condos. Dusty was kind enough to give me the master bedroom—the one that had no bathroom towels and no hot water. During the night, however, he lowered the thermostat to the point that icicles were forming on the inside of the bedro
om window. It got so cold in that room that I had to open all the windows and the balcony door just to make the temperature bearable.
The next morning his sarcastic reaction to my complaint was, “Oh really, it was cold? You should’ve raised the thermostat.” You could see that held-back grin behind his attempted poker face as those words came spewing out with that exaggerated lisp. Perhaps it was his way of payback for thinking I had attempted to pull a rib on him by having no money on me.
I also learned Dusty could have a deep emotional side too, as it was during this trip that he finally opened up about Dustin and how that whole episode went down—a subject he had avoided for as long as he possibly could. It struck an emotional chord deep within him, and he was silent for a long time after talking about it. Personally, I felt this was the most compelling part of his book, because it was one of the few times where Dusty Rhodes took a backseat to Virgil Runnels, Jr.
Looking back now, these are just some of my personal reflections of Dusty, and my experience working with him on something that was very important to him.
So thanks, Dream, for the opportunity to be a small part of your much-storied and very colorful life.
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