Weird Dusty Rhodes article

[Loss]

Link here

 

This is worth reading, even if I'm not quite sure how it all ties together as an article or what to say about it. I guess you could consider it a nice inside view into the psyche of a wrestler, but be forewarned that it's all over the place.

 

The world is staged.

 

I'm a product. We're all products, man, and we don't understand sometimes that we're selling a product.

 

They call it talking smack now. It was Rhode-isms that I made up back then. They just came out of your head.

 

Dusty Rhodes played for the New York Giants. My dad was a huge baseball fan. I never was called Virgil in high school or junior high, I was always called Dusty as my nickname. ... I remember thinking my name was Dusty.

 

I had wrestled for a guy in Detroit and I was going back home to Dallas, and he said, "When you walk in there, act like you've already been a main-eventer. Act like you know what you're doing, be comfortable, but not cocky with what your situation is. Don't go in there wanting to be mediocre."

 

Tom Stimus came to town in Sarasota with $15 in his pocket. He made millions and millions and millions of dollars. He lost millions, he played with millions, he made people happy and he sold 'em great cars. He's an American dream. Tom Stimus was a lot like me - wide open. He was the kind of guy that woke up in the morning, I don't care if he was broke, thinking he was gonna make a million dollars. He would call me and I would go there and I would get out of the car, there was no script, no nothing. He'd have a couple of cars out there. I'd walk up, he'd hand me the mike, man, and we would lay into it.

 

It's the common man. It's just like I am in real life. We sell cars to the common people. The common people is why you're in the car business. They relate to me. I don't look like a bodybuilder, I'm not on steroids. I'm an international known figure.

 

I was a pitchman for a cow-chip-throwing contest sponsored by Lone Star Beer. I said, "I'll do it and I'll pick 'em up as long as they're dried." If you get one that ain't dried, it ain't no fun, Jack.

 

Whether it be "gettin' funky like a monkey" ... every day my wife, she'll be, "What are you talking about, man?"

 

The Bionic Elbow is not bionic until I say it is. And then once I said it to the majority of whatever brown, green, yellow, blue, orange people, whatever they are, they said, "The Dream said it, and it's gospel. It's bionic. How he got it, we don't care. Because when he raises it up and puts it on somebody's noggin', it's a butt-kicker." ... You know how you keep it bionic? You soak it in motor oil overnight. I guarantee you that there are some of my brothers out there that have actually gotten whiskeyed-up and gotten some motor oil with them and their buddies and soaked their elbows.

 

Once a fracas breaks out, then you've got a fight, and once a fight breaks out you've got some excitement going on.

 

The elbow and the Flying Leg Drop and the Figure-Four ... stuff like that's pretty cool.

 

T.C. Lee was a guy that worked with my dad in a plumbing shop in Austin, Texas. He was a cool guy, man. We dug ditches together, and he was smart, too, man, and he understood there was something more than being a ditch digger. I was all-league football, baseball and had all this stuff going down and he said, "Man, you remind me of this 'American dream' thing." ... So I used it in early '74 on an interview. ... Because it's a plumber's son from Austin, don't have a steroided-up body, don't look like a Greek god and when I would go into a fight or a match or something, when I bled (the fans) bled with me. When I cried they cried with me. When I won they won with me. I became part of their family.

 

I was lucky to have a God-given gift of having a tremendous amount of charisma.

 

Roy Rogers never lost his hat in a fight. And the guy would kick his (butt) in the early 30 minutes of the show, and by the end, Roy and Dale would be singing "Happy Trails to You." So sometimes patience is a virtue.

 

There's moments that you have to seize. And somebody said, "Well, he seized the moment." But there's more than one moment.

 

If you walk behind somebody, the view never changes.

 

Ox Baker, he was mean. He was oogly. He wasn't ugly, he was oogly. That's worse than ugly.

 

The worst enemy you have is procrastination.

 

If you lose, you lose. You go on and do something else. But if you never did it, you're never gonna know.

 

If you cut out all the bread, steak and potatoes, I don't want to eat.

 

I introduced this guy called the Shockmaster, who was actually my brother-in-law - 450 pounds, 6-foot-9. We're doing live TV with Turner, with TBS, and he's supposed to explode into this room. We had the door ready so when he came in, the bombs went off just like you see in the movies. And when he exploded into the door, he tripped and he fell. Now this is his big entrance, gonna make him a huge star ... and he fell into the room, all 450 pounds of him. You felt bad at first because it's live TV, but then I started laughing. I thought they were gonna have to take me to the hospital, I was crying. ... I was laughing so hard.

 

The more you dwell on something negative, the worse it's gonna be.

 

Parents really miss the boat when they say, in my day. But in their day they had three channels on TV, not 190. They had a eight-track player and they had a big 78 record in their day.

 

I've had guys that worked for me, I would say, "You happy with where you're at?" And I would rather have a guy that'd say, "No, I'm not happy with where I'm at, man. You're holding me back, or I'm holding myself back. I want your job." I want somebody working around me that wants my job or my spot on the card or my main event.

 

The referee doesn't have eyes in the back of his head. He's always looking the other way because he's being distracted by one of them young, groupie, beautiful ladies that run around with rock stars and wrestlers, and they're yelling on the front row. And usually they got their dress up a little bit too high and ... well, you would be distracted, too. The only time they're really good is when they actually see and go, "One, two, three," and there's a new champion.

 

There's really no fear for me. I believe in reincarnation, so I ain't going nowhere.

[Guest Steffie]

I remembe the Shockmaster entrance. That trip alone killed any chance for a serious push the guy might have had. I remember falling off my couch and just rewinding it over and over when the show was over.

[Coffey]

Not to mention he was wearing a freaking Stormtrooper helmet with glitter glued all over it....