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The G.O.A.T. 100 #65 | Dusty Rhodes
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
Virgil Runnels started up in San Antonio, where Joe Blanchard, the father of Tully Blanchard, trained him. Before a match on May 27, 1968, in Fort Worth, he took the name Dusty Rhodes, and beat veteran Bulldog Danny Plechas in his first match.
Gary Hart always claimed to have given him the name Dusty Rhodes, saying he had watched a 1957 movie with Andy Griffith called “Face in the Crowd,” where Griffith played the lead character named Dusty Rhodes. The character in that movie was actually named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes.
Dusty’s version adds up better, particularly since Dusty Rhodes, a member of the 1954 World Series winning New York Giants, was his father’s favorite baseball player and he was already nicknamed after him.
According to Dusty, his career took off at his first show for the Dallas territory, where he was booked to lose to Grizzly Smith (the father of Jake Roberts, and a major star of the era) at the fabled Dallas Sportatorium. The story is Smith saw so much in him that he switched the finish in the ring, put him over, and the next thing you know, in his second week of his career, he was in a tag team main event against Lou Thesz, his idol.
Truth was, he lost that match to Grizzly, as was the plan. But he did impress people enough in that match that his fortunes changed from being a jobber to getting a push.
According to Dusty, while he was making a name for himself in the ring, when he had just had a shot at the American title of the area's top star Fritz Von Erich making a $700 payday, when he got a phone call from George Wilson, the coach of the Miami Dolphins, wanting him to come to Florida for a tryout with the team. He claimed he’d seen him play, but couldn’t guarantee him any money unless he made the team. That’s when he decided he was going to stay a wrestler where he knew the money was good.
(I find it hard to believe that an NFL coach would know about a player who was never on the roster of his college team, let alone call him personally. And a $700 payoff for a Texas match that wasn’t in Houston at this time doesn’t sound too plausible either. But that's Dusty’s claim.)
By the time he left Texas to move to Kansas City, he was a rising star, and brought in with a push. In his third week in the territory, he beat Pat O’Connor and the proverbial rocket ship got attached to The Dream.
Two weeks later, promoter Bob Geigel decided to put him in a tag team, with another young wrestler named Dick Murdoch, putting them in cowboy hats and calling them The Texas Outlaws. It wasn’t long before the two became one of the hottest tag teams in wrestling. On Nov 7, 1968, The Outlaws beat Tommy & Terry Martin (better known in their home territory as the Cormier or Burke Brothers) to win the North American tag team Championship in Kansas City. He also captured the Central States heavyweight title a month later, and he was on his way to the top.
He returned to Texas in March, 1969, as a main-event heel, working on top against the likes of Jose Lothario and Fritz Von Erich and teaming with Baron Von Raschke. He then moved to Amarillo in September, where he formed a tag team with future rival Harley Race, and had numerous matches with top stars like Terry Funk, Nick Bockwinkel and Dory Funk Sr.
Murdoch was back in Amarillo in February, and The Outlaws reunited for a match with Terry Funk & Ricky Romero. Not long after they gave notice to Dory Sr. that they were leaving to go work for The Sheik in Detroit.
They became the top tag team in three promotions at the same time, all of which were doing strong business and they were the heels right underneath the very top. For The Sheik, they captured that area’s version of the NWA world tag team championship from Ben Justice & The Stomper (Guy Mitchell). Six days earlier, in Buffalo, they had won a tournament to create the first NWF world tag team champions in a promotion that ran in Upstate New York and parts of Pennsylvania as well as the Cleveland area, kicking off a period that for a long time was considered the golden age of wrestling in that city. In addition, they worked as the top tag team in Toronto.
It was during this period that they started getting all kinds of magazine publicity, bragging about bar fights and smoking cigars. While the NWA had different world tag team champions, the two major ones were based in Detroit and San Francisco. But Roy Shire hated wrestling magazines, so his champions got minimal national publicity. Since the NWA was much larger than the WWWF or AWA as far as the reach of the territory went, even though the tag champs were mostly regional, Murdoch & Rhodes, holding two different versions of the world tag team titles at the same time, were pushed as the top tag team in the world in magazines for much of 1970, and this publicity made them national names to the ardent fans around the country. During this period they also defended those NWA titles in places like Florida and Texas.
The two next moved to Florida in September. At this time, Florida was the most respected wrestling territory in the country by other NWA affiliated promoters. Eddie Graham was considered a booking genius and in the 70s, he was in his prime. While the money wasn’t great in the state, the talent was top notch because everyone wanted to come to Florida. (I guess the tax breaks must have also been the same as they are now?)
The business was respected far more than just about anywhere in the country except St. Louis. The wrestlers were considered major stars and the nightlife in Florida was the best in America at the time.
The Texas Outlaws were brought in with a major push. The first night they were at a television taping at the Tampa Sportatorium, they defeated World champion Dory Funk Jr. and top babyface Jose Lothario in the morning, and in the night in Jacksonville, beat Lothario & Argentina Apollo to capture the Florida tag team championships.
But they weren’t there long, because an even better offer came. While Florida was the most respected territory, the promotion in the world of wrestling with the broadest circuit was Jim Barnett’s World Championship Wrestling in Australia. After their success as the top tag team in the U.S.A., they got an offer to come to Australia and win the IWA world tag team titles.
They left Florida abruptly. Not only were they still the Florida tag team champions, but Dusty had just beaten Lothario to win the Brass Knux title, and two weeks later they headed to Texas to do a short program where they put over Tim Woods & George Scott for the American tag team titles, since beating one of the country’s top tag teams would make Woods & Scott a stronger team, and it was off to Australia.
The Texas Outlaws came into Australia at the start of 1971, managed by Playboy Gary Hart. But what was supposed to be a long lucrative run ended up only lasting three months.
In Australia, the wrestlers flew all over the country due to a deal Barnett had with the local airlines, and they stayed in the country’s nicest hotels. Barnett insisted that they come across as professionals during their entire stay, because he wanted nothing that would make the business look bad. Wrestlers had to always wear business attire, a dress shirt, nice pants, a tie, a jacket and dress shoes, whenever they were in public.
Barnett knew that didn’t fit the gimmick of the Texas Outlaws tag team, so he told them to wear nice denim blue jeans, cowboy boots and cowboy string ties with nice shirts, so they would look like stars but still dress like their gimmick.
But the pair ignored the dress code. They were walking around cities in Australia with cut off T-shirts and short jeans, almost like the Daisy Dukes that Jessica Simpson would wear in the god awful Dukes of Hazzard movie remake. Barnett was living in a hotel penthouse in Kings Cross, and while walking through the area, he saw the two. He immediately ordered them to drop the titles in Melbourne, worked rematch programs in all the major cities for the next month, and sent them home.
Rhodes went on his own back to Texas, and then moved to Leroy McGuirk’s circuit in Oklahoma to be the top heel for a run against their top face, perennial North American champion “Cowboy” Bill Watts.
He worked through November, winning and losing the title to Watts. He also worked a program as a heel against NWA World Champion Dory Funk Jr., and after losing a blow-off match to Watts in October, he finished up with a program with Ivan Putski, ending his stay in a loser-leaves-town match in Shreveport, LA.
It was that run as North American champion – and his matches with Watts and Funk Jr. – that established Rhodes as a major heel singles money draw.
The next stop was Japan for a month for the IWE, where he was booked by Verne Gagne, a prelude to his arrival to the AWA at the start of 1972.
Dusty fit perfectly in Gagne's Midwest promotion. He bragged about being a barroom brawler in promos, which led to a natural feud with The Crusher. He formed a tag team with Larry Hennig. Milwaukee was selling out every month as it was, but they shot an angle in a tag match with Rhodes & Hennig vs. Crusher & Wahoo McDaniel, to lead to the big showdown.
Crusher was to face Rhodes in a saloon match. A saloon match was Milwaukee’s version of a lumberjack match. Crusher explained that in the bar fights he’s in, “the patrons don’t let the cowards run away”. If they try to run, they are thrown back in. The idea that the Texas bar room brawler was coming to Milwaukee, Crusher’s home town, saw them book the Milwaukee Arena that the NBA Bucks team played in and they drew a sellout of 12,062 fans on June 17, 1972.
Murdoch arrived in November and the Outlaws reformed as a full-time team. This was during the period where they were filming the 1974 movie The Wrestler. There was a scene in the movie where the promoter, played by Ed Asner, was yelling at Rhodes & Murdoch because they were getting into trouble beating too many people up in bar fights, and told them no matter what, no more fighting.
In the scene, a karate guy, played by pro wrestler Harold Sakata, the former Olympic weightlifting silver medalist, starts harassing people at the bar and making fun of them, trying to intimidate them, including pouring their drinks over their head and dousing them with their own beer as they had to hold their temper because they promised the promoter they’d get in no more fights. Care to guess if that works out?
Bruiser & Crusher, was a natural rivalry for The Texas Outlaws. There were not a lot of matches with the two teams though, because Bruiser had his own territory and didn’t work much in the AWA, but the teams sold out Chicago’s Amphitheatre on March 9, 1973 in their most famous match.
Rhodes was a successful main-event heel. But the first taste of what was to come came one night at a house show on March 10, 1973, in Rockford, IL. The Outlaws were finishing up in early June, headed to Japan, and then Rhodes was going to return to Florida. Gagne booked a rare battle of heels for the tag titles, Stevens & Bockwinkel vs. The Texas Outlaws.
Stevens & Bockwinkel, as champions, worked as heels. Murdoch, the better worker of the Outlaws, sold most of the way. Rhodes tagged in, and started shaking his body, like he had seen Thunderbolt Patterson do earlier in his career, and did what at the time would be called the “black babyface comeback”, except using elbows to the top of the head in place of head-butts. The place went absolutely crazy.
It was during this period that Ric Flair was just breaking in as a prelim wrestler. While Flair emulated Ray Stevens, and loved Superstar Billy Graham for his physique, he wanted to be Ramblin Ricky Rhodes, the “brother”, or “cousin” of Dusty Rhodes.
Gagne thought Ric Flair was a better name. While legend has it Dusty told him the same thing, Sullivan remembers that summer, when Rhodes was back in Florida, that Dusty was pitching Eddie Graham on Ramblin Ricky Rhodes, a 275 pound powerlifter looking guy.
Rhodes went back to Florida as a singles heel, and a month in he beat Bill Dromo in Miami Beach to win the Southern title. While in the AWA, the top promo in the area was Superstar Billy Graham, who emulated the style of Muhammad Ali. Rhodes was a good talker, but couldn’t do the style he’d become famous for since all the rhyming was Graham’s gimmick.
When he came to Florida, as a heel, he combined Ali and Graham, combined with his lisp and famous cadence and delivery. He was a strong main event heel in a successful territory. But he was also funny, kind of like what The Rock was in 98-99.
It's never talked about today that “The American Dream” was actually a heel persona to mock the working people of Florida, as he wore his fancy robes, bragged about his money, women, and street fighting prowess in what was a cross between the gritty persona of later rival Ole Anderson, and the glamour persona of Flair.
On December 18, 1973, in Tampa, Rhodes pinned Lou Thesz. This was key for showing that Eddie Graham had brought in the GOAT at this point and had Rhodes beat him. Rhodes was going to be more than just that year’s lead singles heel in CWF.
Rhodes was flown back to the AWA a few times in 1974, as a babyface, usually to work against Superstar Graham, Bockwinkel or Stevens, or a combination of two of those three. He had established himself as a real crowd favorite by this point and in Florida, people were starting to like him because of his interviews.
On April 17, 1974, at a sold out show at the Miami Beach Convention Center, World’s champion Jack Brisco was defending against Rhodes. Rhodes had worked numerous times with Brisco, usually getting beaten, since Brisco was the top guy in the NWA, and the biggest wrestling star in Florida.
Eddie Graham saw it was time to turn Rhodes. Rhodes stayed even with Brisco in a mostly-clean match. Brisco put him over in a few spots that he normally wouldn’t for a heel. Graham’s idea was that people would see that Rhodes was on Brisco’s level. Then, at 47:00, Rhodes dropped the big elbow, his finishing move, on Brisco. At the count of two, Brisco put his leg over the ropes. People had never seen Brisco be forced to save his title like that.
The crowd, for an instant, booed Brisco. While Brisco was actually from Oklahoma, everyone by that point thought of him as the Florida native who rose the ranks and brought his adopted home state its first world championship. But now people were wanting Rhodes to win it. The emotion only lasted a few minutes. The smarter fans at that point figured a 60:00 draw, which is what Graham figured they would do. Instead, Brisco charged at Rhodes, who instinctively backflipped him over the top rope for the DQ. He wanted that disappointing moment where it ended instead of the draw.
In the months after, Pak Song, a giant for the Republic of Korea was forming a tag team with Rhodes, managed by Gary Hart. There were teases to the future, as Hart was favoring Song. And Rhodes questioned Hart about an American aligning himself so closely with a Korean… (because ‘Merica.)
Probably the most famous angle in the history of Championship Wrestling from Florida took place a few weeks later. On May 14, 1974, at the Tampa Sportatorium, Rhodes & Song faced Eddie Graham, and his son Mike. Hart & Song turned on Rhodes, and beat him bloody. And kept beating on him. Nobody would save him. All the heels wouldn’t cross Hart. All the faces hated Rhodes.
Finally, Mike Graham, son of Eddie had enough. Mike wanted to make the save. Eddie, his father, the Godfather of wrestling in Florida, ordered him not to. Mike, a pushed babyface who was still thought of as Eddie’s 22-year-old son, defied his father’s orders, and hit the ring, chasing Song & Hart out.
It was clear that Eddie was using the angle to not only make Dusty his top star, but his son Dusty’s key sidekick. Dusty later watched his beating on replay and talked his talk, and when Mike Graham jumped in he said: “Mike Graham just became a man.”
The aim to make Mike just as big a star as Dusty obviously didn't come off. Mike just didn't have it. But the angle got Dusty over as a massive babyface.
Dusty Rhodes vs. Pak Song in the summer of 1974, was the biggest drawing feud the territory ever saw. Coming out with no walkout music, Dust still provoked a massive reaction. Earlier on television, Song had squeezed an egg end-to-end, breaking it to show what he would do to Rhodes' head at the arenas that week. Rhodes came out with an egg in hand as a callback, and broke it right in the faces of Song and Hart.
The matches between the two were simple and formulaic, yet effective. The giant Korean with the vice-like grip would use his claw, either to Dusty’s head (and he’d bleed buckets from his scalp) or to his shoulder – and Dusty would blade the shoulder. Dusty would sell, he would twitch, and eventually he’d make his comeback. Then there would be a referee bump and then they would go to a finish, usually a DQ to build to next week’s match, or a finish that would naturally lead to next week’s gimmick match.
There were Texas Death matches, Street Fights, Cage matches, and what would go forward as Dusty’s specialty – the bullrope match. The matches weren’t long, usually about 10-12 minutes, and there was little technical grappling. Rhodes would always bleed, and his opponents would bleed with him.
The idea was to go in the main cities until they stopped selling out. They ran weekly. They started in late May and they were still going strong in August. Gary Hart put a bounty on Dusty, and it brought in all kinds of heels, from Dusty’s supposed football teammates, the Funks and Duncum, and even Murdoch.
In probably his next major angle, it was a kill or be killed with Terry Funk, who is probably remembered (even more than Song) as Rhodes’ biggest rival of that era. It all stemmed from an I Quit match, with a finish similar to what Funk later did in the empty arena match with Jerry Lawler.
Neither could get the other to quit, no matter how bloody and crazy the match went. Funk got desperate looking for the Gary Hart bounty, and broke a beer bottle over the post and tried to jab the glass into Rhodes’ eye. Rhodes reversed, and drove the broken bottle into Funk’s eye. Funk bladed the eye (a blade job that led to a little bit of droop in that eye for the rest of his life) and screamed that he couldn’t see, absolutely freaked out, quit and screamed about being blinded. Funk, for years, would point to his droopy eye on interviews building countless rematches as a reminder of that angle.
From that point Rhodes’ reputation went everywhere. While based in Florida, he’d fly out to work big shows for the AWA in the Midwest, in the Carolinas, regularly in Georgia and Texas. He became – alongside Andre the Giant and the NWA world champion – the biggest touring attraction in the sport. He was a huge favorite in New York, since the Florida television show aired on Monday nights on a Spanish-language station.
Once Terry Funk beat Jack Brisco to become world champion, Rhodes became the perennial No. 1 contender. Like Brisco before him, Rhodes would constantly be right on the brink of dethroning Funk, and later Race. Rhodes would draw his biggest crowds when he’d tell the fans that this time for sure he was bringing the belt home.
Of course, eventually, people would start getting tired of Rhodes trying and failing which began to make things difficult. It also wasn’t beneficial to Eddie Graham to make Rhodes World Champion, because he’d have less dates with him, because he'd have to travel to other promotions to defend as NWA champ. And unlike the early 70s with Brisco as champ, Graham no longer had the depth and overall strength of the promotion as in its heyday. But you had to give in to the masses. You had to let Dusty finish his story.
On August 21, 1979, at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, a sellout crowd saw Rhodes beat Race to win the world title. But his brief reign was only acknowledged in Florida and Georgia. Rhodes always wanted to be billed as a former world champion, a designation that meant so much in those days. But in some eyes, holding the title for just a week hurt Dusty as a draw. The Florida fans had waited from early 1975 for the moment of Dusty winning the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title and then losing the grandest prize in wrestling so quickly was disillusioning.
The story told was that Rhodes beat Terry Funk four days later at a big show in St. Petersburg, the very next afternoon he beat Don Muraco in Jacksonville. He was scheduled against Race hours later, on August 26, 1979, in Orlando. Before the match, Terry Funk destroyed Rhodes with a chair shot beating. While those kinds of angles weren’t that unusual, the world title was booked differently. Rhodes still went through with his match with Race, and lost the title.
The truth is Dusty was a better chaser than champion. Also in this time the touring NWA Champion worked best for the most part when he was a heel and able to go an hour in matches so that the local babyface that he was facing would shine in almost-but-not-quite beating the champ for the title. Dusty could bring neither to the table.
The traits Dusty could bring to the table as one of the most popular wrestlers in the world came to the fore in a feud with Kevin Sullivan in the early 80s. It also was the metamorphosis to the Sullivan that fans would love to hate for the next 15 years. The feud was good vs evil in its purest form with Sullivan coming across as the devil even if the word was never explicitly mentioned by Kevin contrary to popular belief.
Christmas Day 1982 saw Rhodes and Sullivan in a Cage Match with the loser having to leave the Florida territory for a lengthy period of time. In the territorial days of pro wrestling, holidays were the big days for a promotion to put their biggest shows on. Christmas Day was a perfect day for families to go out and enjoy live entertainment after opening the presents and Christmas dinner. A bloody, hate-filled Cage Match isn’t really the same as a showing of Wallace and Gromit here in the UK, but Florida gonna Florida I guess.
Santa Clauses were dispersed around the crowd to bring joy and gifts to the kids in attendance and also distract them from Dusty and Kevin’s crimson masks. But one of the St. Nick’s gave a present to Kevin Sullivan, a weapon to use on Dusty to pick up the win. The “evil” Santa was Jake Roberts.
Within weeks, a new wrestler was being showcased in vignettes to come into Championship Wrestling from Florida. A masked man called The Midnight Rider claiming to come from The Diablo Canyon had a body shape very similar to Dusty. Sullivan claimed that Rhodes was openly flouting the leaving-town stipulation and demanded that NWA representative Bob Geigel do something about it.
Bob needed proof before doing something about this alleged taking of the piss by Dusty, but also if it was proved to be Dusty, Dusty would be banned from the NWA for a year. Another Dusty enemy, JJ Dillon offered a bounty for someone to unmask The Rider.
After numerous CWF wrestlers tried and failed, the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair offered his services to unmask Rider. He was going to take the chance to make sure Rhodes (if it was Rhodes under the mask of course) couldn't bother him for a whole year, and Flair was even willing to put his title on the line for that chance.
Midnight Rider would beat Flair for the title. But when Geigel requested that Midnight unmask – as under NWA rules (kayfabe) the identity of the NWA World Champion couldn’t be secret – Midnight refused and so the title win was null and void.
When the time that Dusty was forced to spend away from Florida expired, Midnight “left the territory,” (guess that World Class money in Dallas was too tempting) and the Rhodes/Sullivan rivalry continued. An angle which saw Dusty’s sister blinded by Sullivan spitting black ink in her face helped to carry the feud into 1984.
In the meantime, Dusty was making it known on TV in other territories that he wanted to become the NWA Champion. At the inaugural Starrcade, Dusty (who didn’t have an in-ring role on the show) did an interview signalling his intentions. After Flair, the hometown hero, beat Harley Race to win the World Title, Dusty made a challenge to Flair in the immediate aftermath and came across as an a-hole in the proceedings.
The post-match confrontation was to build for Starrcade 1984. The premise for the main event of Ric vs Dusty saw a million dollar purse for the match, billed as “the biggest prize in wrestling history.” Over the course of the intervening 365 days, Flair had become a heel. The match would end in a blood stoppage with special referee Joe Frazier calling it when Dusty’s cut was impeding him.
Of course, this finish was to continue the feud. The most famous moment of the Flair-Rhodes feud came in September of ‘85 when Flair (who was more tweener than heel at that point) turned fully heel and formed a faction with Arn & Ole Anderson and Tully Blanchard, a group that would later be known as The Four Horsemen.
The angle in Greensboro would see the four “break” the leg of Dusty. What followed was a promo that isn’t just Dusty’s best but a contender for the greatest promo of all time. “Hard Times” is one of those that must be seen. It works in 2026. Dusty talks about no matter what Flair does to him, it’s nothing compared to the travails that the average American is going through, it speaks to people in today’s world that is dominated by the cost of living crisis. It’s one of the must-watch promos in wrestling history.
The words Starrcade 1985 are mentioned in the promo. The main event would be Dusty and Flair once again. The finish sees Dusty pin Flair with an inside cradle to win the NWA World Title for the third time… but…….
The Andersons interfered earlier in the finishing stretch while referee Tommy Young was down and while Rhodes had fought off Arn, Ole hit a knee to the back of Dusty. A new ref comes in and while Flair picks up Dusty, Dusty reverses into the cradle for the 1-2-3.
Tommy (who saw the Ole knee) disqualifies Flair and says Rhodes has won via disqualification – but Flair is still champion under the newly implemented law in the NWA (copying the decades-long law in the WWF) that the champ can’t lose the belt by DQ or count-out.
While “Dusty Finishes” were being used in the AWA and World Class Championship Wrestling before Starrcade 1985 this kind of bait-and-switch storytelling became synonymous with Dusty Rhodes not just because of the events of that Thanksgiving night, but also later when Dusty would become the booker of Jim Crockett Promotions it would be a trope that he resorted to far too often.
A rematch with Dusty actually winning the title would happen at the first Great American Bash on 26/7/85, but he would lose it back to Flair just 14 days later in St Louis. In all, Dusty held the Domed Globe/10 Pounds of Gold belt for 107 days in total over the course of his three reigns.
While 1986 JCP is one of the most fun years that a promotion has ever had creatively, with WWF becoming the national power, JCP were always trailing the Fed – especially when Vince McMahon would play the same kind of dirty tricks that WWE are currently playing with AEW.
Starrcade 1987 was sabotaged by WWF creating the Survivor Series to go against JCP’s “granddaddy” show and making demands on PPV providers that they could only be allowed to air WrestleMania IV if they showed Survivor Series instead of Starrcade. But while the Fed were being the monsters that we all know they are, JCP booked by Dusty were also giving them some easy lay-ups.
In 1988 alone, Dusty booked himself to win the Bunkhouse Stampede match (a battle royale in a cage) and was booed out of the building, Lex Luger’s ascent to the top was halted by a bizarre end to the Flair vs Luger Great American Bash main event, and then Flair beating Luger at Starrcade and a purchase of the UWF promotion out of New Orleans saw an interpromotional rivalry botched. In the final quarter of 1988, Jim Crockett Promotions was sold to Turner Broadcasting. Turner wanted a more kid-friendly product, similar to WWF at the time. Dusty then proceeded to book himself getting busted open by The Road Warriors in an angle where they turned heel in spite of the new directives laid down by his new bosses.
Dusty was fired after Starrcade 1988.
Dusty started his 1989 back in Florida wrestling for Mike Graham’s attempted revival of the Florida territory after Jim Crockett had also bought CWF along with UWF but then in June, the impossible had happened. Dusty Rhodes was on WWF television.
The WWF vs JCP war had also seen the WWF take an unveiled shot at Dusty by calling the black bodyguard of Ted Dibiase Virgil after Dusty’s real first name – an obvious dig at the style of interview that Dusty was famous for which drew love from the African-American communities in the South.
When Dusty signed for WWF, the creative powers of the Fed produced vignettes introducing Dusty as “The Common Man” seeing him undergo tasks done by the average working class American such as working at a garbage disposal truck, work as a plumber, pizza delivery man and a butcher assistant. He would also wrestle in gear with yellow polka dots on a black background.
People saw this as a way to trivialise and demean Dusty, as he was one of the faces of the promotion that in Vince’s mind was trying to take food off his table and now he was Vince’s property and the world was going to be shown that Vince was the boss of Dusty.
Rhodes would have a valet in Sapphire, an overweight black woman who would heavily feature in the second feud Dusty had in the company of his employment after his fall feud with The Big Boss Man.
There’s an argument to be made that the Dusty/Sapphire vs Randy Savage/Queen Sherri match at WrestleMania VI was the second biggest match on the card but that was still dwarfed by the Hogan/Warrior main event.
The feud between Rhodes and Savage ended at Summerslam but would be in the background for the kick off of Dusty’s final feud in the Fed. Ted Dibiase had bought the soul of Sapphire who left Dusty to join the side of The Million Dollar Man. This started a feud with Dibiase which climaxed with a tag match with Dusty and his son Dustin versus Dibiase and Virgil at the 1991 Royal Rumble PPV. Dusty was the background to the story of Ted and Virgil and Virgil’s face turn that night. It was also the final night Dusty spent in WWF.
Dusty went back to WCW as the head of the booking committee, a position he held until 1994. He only wrestled once in that time and that was in the Tokyo Dome at the Jan 4th show, teaming with Dustin against Kim Duk and Masa Saito. Dusty actually wrestled just six more matches in the 90s. His time in WCW in this decade was spent mostly in the commentary booth where Dusty was … at best an acquired taste.
“There’s a lady in the men’s bathroom” during the Falls Count Anywhere match between Chris Benoit and Kevin Sullivan is one of my Top Ten best ever moments of wrestling commentary … but in all, Dusty made for a weird listen on commentary.
Dusty wrestled 88 matches in the 2000’s, wrestling in ECW in a feud with Steve Corino. He wrestled 13 times for Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling a small promotion he ran. He also wrestled several times during the early years of NWA:TNA, working as their booker for a year.
He also worked in a ROH ring as well as at Hustle, MLW and IWA:Mid-South events. Dusty would also wrestle on a couple of WWE events – as part of a team of legends to wrestle The Spirit Squad, and also in a Texas Bullrope Match against Randy Orton.
But Dusty’s main influence in WWE would be at the newly established Performance Center as the promo teacher. Many a PC “graduate” in the days before 2015 talked of Dusty’s father figure status in their time in Orlando and he took a special liking to the “broken toys” that came to his classes. Dusty would pass his knowledge of the art of the promo to his students, all while he was suffering with kidney disease. Those kidneys would fail him on June 10, 2015 after a fall at his home.
Paramedics were called to his home, where he was taken to hospital where he died the next day.
When the news broke, it was a shock to the wrestling world. ESPN, who didn’t do wrestling news on their network in 2015, had news of Dusty’s death on their crawler that traditionally rotated on the bottom of their broadcasts.
His legacy was one of a man who showed the wrestling world that charisma could take you a long way. He also built a legacy with his family. You might have heard of his sons Cody and Dustin…
But in all, Dusty demonstrated that if you have something in your chamber? Use it… because it could take you a long way in life.
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