Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  So anyway, “Superstar” and I sold out the Garden and Vince Jr. came to us and said, “I’m going to do this movie.”

  He already had visions in his head of the thing he wanted to do. But this wasn’t the first time he had grandiose plans. Sometime earlier he had an idea for an album for me to make and a concept for a movie; he already had this movement going—that was phenomenal.

  Now my attorney, Henry Gonzalez from Tampa, planned to go with me to Ed Germano’s Hit Factory, which was a major place you made music in New York City at the time. Henry was a very good friend (and is to this day), but at the time he was a noted attorney on the Patty Hearst case and he defended some really heavy people in high-profile cases.

  Anyway, after one of the Garden shows at about midnight, after driving around in the limousine, we went in to cut this song. As a matter of fact, Hall and Oates were in the next studio doing their thing. While the session went well, I wasn’t prepared for it. I didn’t really understand what we were trying to do there as I was more into country. What they set me up with was actually a rap record called “Let’s Get Funky” with seven or eight black chicks on the track singing backup and everybody getting … well, getting funky. Just like that, there I was with a mama in the kitchen that night and I was just kind of messing around with the whole thing, not knowing the seriousness of it all. I had practiced all week on a country song by Willie Nelson as I thought that’s kind of what it was going to be about; a wrestling song with a country twist.

  After we cut the song, me and Henry went and sat down with Vince and Ed Germano right there at the Hit Factory and they had what looked to me like one of those 950-page contracts that Vince uses to this day. It’s like the more paper you use, the more serious you think it is when it really could be done in one line … you’re going to get this, I’m going to get that and don’t do this or it will cost you that. I know it’s necessary and all that shit, but sometimes it’s just so stupid.

  Anyway, it came around to money and I could tell Vince was uneasy with Henry because I had enough brains to not go in there by myself, which he was not used to. He was always dealing directly with the wrestlers, never representatives, and being one for all these years, there were many times where I tried to make deals by myself and it rarely works out. That’s why everybody hates my agent now—Michael O’Brien —because he makes deals for me. He makes it easy for me and I don’t have to do anything. This way I stay the babyface and he becomes the hero. Anyway, nobody would dare bring an attorney into a meeting with Vince at that point in time, but I did, and so that deal didn’t look real good when we got in the limo. Vince was pretty perturbed with it as he had that “nobody stands up to me” attitude. But, hell, I was “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes, and still am.

  Here comes my ego again, but I know I’m on a level with him mentally or what I think I know about the industry … what I know about my business. I’m not talking about marketing and going out and selling T-shirts, I’m talking about the wrestling end of our business. I don’t think anybody knows more about the wrestling industry than I do—whether I do or not— and surely not him.

  After that was done he tried the movie thing with Superstar and me. We would be there doing about 100 interviews or whatever it is each week and at the interview segments, afterwards he would have people tape Superstar and me and tape an interview with me almost like a documentary; he was trying to put this thing together. So the big blow off came in New York City at the Warwick Hotel where they always stayed. We went up there to VKM’s room at about three in the morning, and he was sitting at a desk writing stuff down. The room looked really dimly lit and he had these producers, directors, or whoever they were, sitting in the room with us.

  Well, Superstar and I sat down and Vince said, “We’re going to do this movie about you two guys…” but it was about ex-wrestlers or whatever was the storyline… and we would be cops in New York running around like Starsky and Hutch and all that type of stuff.

  It sounded good so I said, “Man this is going to be good,” ‘cause I could handle that. Superstar didn’t say a lot at this point.

  Then I asked Vince, “That sounds great … what’s the financial?”

  This came up again, but this time he said, “You get a Garden payoff.”

  Well a Garden payoff at that time was three grand … $3,000 … that’s what you got. You got $250 to be on all the other matches and you got $3,000 to be in the Garden main event whether it was sold out or not, because that’s where you wanted to be—and that was a lot of money back then, but it was only $3,000 for a movie?

  So, I was drunk now too, and I’m sure Vince was drunk or whatever, as he was pretty well there too, and I said, “That ain’t gonna get it.” Just like that.

  Defiant once again.

  “Oh no,” he said. He couldn’t believe that shit so he left and went into the bedroom. When he came back out he broke the pencil in half and said, “The deal’s off.”

  Uh oh, shit! Jesus Christ … so that deal never came about.

  The next thing that happened after that—and at the time I had just come off a bout of phlebitis in my legs where I had to go on a diet and was down to about 255 pounds so I looked pretty good—was that it was actually played for me to be in the Hogan spot.

  Now I know you’re gonna say, “Oh, that egoistical motherfucker! That’s not true!” But the next thing you know, Hogan was there. Hogan was the one who came in and he jumped right into that spot. He must not have brought his attorney. …

  Anyway, he’s being his attorney now, that’s for damn sure. But he went right into that spot and he was getting ready to do that whole big thing with them; rock and wrestling, celebrities, all that shit we started.

  So Vince Jr. and I always had that kind of back-and-forth respect relationship. He knows I know the business and I respect the shit out of him. But shortly after that the territories started to get bought up. VKM decided to take over the world. The territorial system was on the verge of being killed as we knew it, and the Evil Empire was about to take over.

  Like I alluded to earlier, when that started to happen, we were very comfortable in Florida, and I was very comfortable with it because of the office’s ties with the “Wrestling Mafia” in New York … Eddie’s ties with Vince Sr. But it was around this time that Vince Sr. was starting to get very sick and Eddie was always in a depressed mood, not knowing what was going to happen.

  After one of the shows at the Garden I thought I really needed to find out where the Florida office stood. After every Garden show Vince would have all his people—his cronies, his posse, his crew—whatever you want to call them, they would all go over to Jimmy Weston’s restaurant and they would have a big, long table and they would eat dinner. If you got invited to dinner, that was a big deal, because it was a real fancy renowned supper club that had live music, mostly jazz; not your typical kind of place for a wrestling crowd.

  I always liked the fact that I was invited, and if you were on top, whether you were invited or not, you would be sure to go by and pay your respects and rightfully so; that was kind of an unwritten protocol.

  This one particular night Michele wasn’t with me like she usually was and I rode around in the limo, went down to the Lone Star Café, had a few drinks and then headed back over to where everybody else was to pay my respects. I knew Barnett was in town since he was still booking me at the time with Florida and another territory he owned—Georgia Championship Wrestling—and Eddie and he were part of that group of guys that could not be broken up.

  So I went over there, got out of the limo and walked in to see this long table with Vince Sr. down at one end and Vince Jr. and Barnett down at the other end. The table was like one of those tables you see in a “Knights of the Long Table” movie or something—not round table—but there were people sitting everywhere. So I went around the table and paid my respects to all the important people.

  Barnett and VKM were at the end of the table and by this time they were
pretty high. And when I mean high, I mean high. When Jim Barnett drank he would get giggly … girlish … girlishly giggly … and he was really fun to be around and I loved being around him. I loved the guy. So I went and sat down right across from Vince Jr. and next to my booker and friend Jim Barnett. Well Barnett was smiley faced and he was always smiley faced when he was either drunk, had money, or he’d come into money … that was something that he did. Or he had just met someone he really liked and the guy was younger than him. Not a knock. That was just how Jim Barnett was. Everyone knew Jim was gay and after many drinks he was an unbelievable guy.

  Vince Jr. looked like he was feeling real good and when Barnett got up to go to the bathroom for a white powder break, Vince Jr. leaned across the table, looked me right in the eye and said, “I own Jim Barnett, Dusty, and you work for me.”

  I thought, “Holy shit, what does this mean?”

  He glanced down the table toward where his dad was sitting and then looked back at me and said, “They all work for me.”

  Well, I knew the shit had hit the fan. I knew there was something going down bigger than just running the Garden and this move was being made. Barnett came back and when he did I think he was kind of ready to go and I noticed he had this paper in the lapel of his coat.

  At the time we were staying at the InterContinental Barclay Hotel, so I put him in the limo and I was taking him back. As the limo eased through the streets of Gotham, he leaned over and showed me. It was a contract; the contract that I found out later was the first big sellout to Vince Jr. So now every time the limo driver turned a corner, Jim would lean toward me. … I thought he was drunk enough so I kept trying to grab the contract out of his coat lapel so I could read at least the fine print of what was going on. I wouldn’t let that go. … I was determined to read that thing.

  We got out of the limo, walked into the hotel and we sat down in the middle of the hotel where a little bar was. We got a couple more glasses of brandy—he loved brandy—which was like 20 times more expensive than Schlitz beer. So I figured I’ll give him a couple more of these and I’ll lean towards him, reach over for his lapel, grab the contract, read it and then drop it on the floor or something. But I could never get it, so I was really confused about what was going on.

  When I got back to Florida, of course, Eddie had said that Vince Jr. had bought out another one of the great territories of all time—Georgia Championship Wrestling—and Jim Barnett.

  “God damn!” I said, “It’s some big shit going down here!”

  Not long after that happened, I’ll never forget a very, very sad day.

  Vince Sr.’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he was in the hospital. I used to call him on the phone to see how he was doing. Well, he called me back at home and I asked him how he was doing, he said, “Not well.” Then I talked to his wife and she said he’s not doing well and I felt bad and he got back on the phone and said to me, “Don’t let this happen. You have the power to not let this happen!”

  He never came right out and said it, but to this day what I think he was talking about was his son’s plan to take over the business, because we all knew what was happening. He knew that it would change wrestling history forever.

  At the time I had a tremendous amount of power. People don’t understand or don’t realize just how much power that I had through Eddie and through being the top babyface in the industry. I was the top money producer and I had a knowledge Eddie had given me about running the business—about the wrestling business—that other people didn’t have. It came very easy to me and I had a lot of power and I had a lot of say with all the members of the NWA, and that was because of Eddie.

  I think Vince Sr. was not necessarily worried about his family as I’m sure everything was taken care of there, but I think he was really concerned about who was going to take care of all his cronies. Did he come right out and say, “You have the ability to stop my son from doing this”? No. But like I said, I interpreted it that way because we knew what was happening as it already had begun to take shape. I can’t say for him and I want to make sure that everybody knows this is only my opinion … and my opinion is that those guys he took care of, Senior was concerned with who was going to take care of them now? Who was going to take care of the business the way it was as a territorial system?

  I think if you could ask any promoter of the time, they always wanted to consider themselves as one of the Godfathers like Eddie. Even Jerry Jarrett was in that mold, and all those fucking guys ran our business … and here was the head honcho saying, “Man, you got some power to stop this.” That’s pretty strong to say and what can I do? Do I take a shot? Do I keep the status quo and say I’m not going to do it?

  It’s like when I got a call one time from Wahoo McDaniel, my bud, and he said we had to go to Hawaii to wrestle to build the territory up a little more with the AWA stuff. He said, “You’re the champion of Hawaii,” which I was, and so I had to go. At that particular time we were working in Winnipeg and I got to work with Crusher, and I made a lot of money with him. Well, he almost missed the last flight and we just decided not to go. If you leave us, we won’t go. Now these are all veterans trying to fuck this young Dusty Rhodes. All of those guys told me that, so what did I do? I didn’t go to the show. I was the champion and it was the only show that I’d ever missed like that, so I didn’t go and they all went … those motherfuckers all went … and I thought Crusher and I were going to have a fucking fistfight over it, even though he knew that’s the most fucking money I’d ever made in my life, I learned a great lesson because of it, and that is go with your instincts, go with your gut.

  And so my gut, my instincts, told me that’s what Vince Sr. was trying to tell me; that I had the ability through business to stop Vince Jr. from doing this to the industry.

  Anyway, I wish I would have talked to him a little bit more about what I needed to do to stop it from happening … but if it never would have happened, we never would have had this big, tremendous financial windfall for the top guys that we had. We would never have had this humongous television stuff going on with wrestling. I think in that aspect of it, VKM took it to a different level … but he killed the territorial system, which killed wrestling for a number of very talented guys—it’s the double-edged sword with this thing.

  Shortly after that happened, Eddie committed suicide. Gone was my mentor, my close friend, and a father figure. There was a lot that happened in our business during this time that was dramatic, sad and just crazy … but Vince, no longer referred to as Junior, took no prisoners, no matter who they were. He made sure that swagger his dad had when walking down the corridors of Madison Square Garden became his own. He became the “Prince” of the “Evil Empire” and pretty soon he was the “King” of the “Evil Empire.”

  That just kind of gives you an idea of what went on and how things were done back then. They were done in secrecy and it was done where only a few people knew what was going on without any thought of who it was going to hurt or who it’s not going to hurt, and it was done only for “What’s it going to do for me.” Unfortunately, I think that goes without saying in any walk of life for any business.

  Anyway, that’s what I thought of Vince Sr. and the respect that I had for him and the way he did his business.

  Business is business.

  CHAPTER 9

  While Vince was on his crusade to capture the world of pro wrestling, we were busy trying to fight his “Evil Empire” from an office in Charlotte, North Carolina; an office that would eventually lose the battle due to mismanagement and miscommunication.

  Since its demise, there have been people throughout the years who claim that I was solely responsible for the downfall of Jim Crockett Promotions. This issue needs to be laid to rest once and for all, because quite simply, that’s just bullshit.

  I’ve often said that the Crockett era was the sweetest era and it could never be matched again. Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling was a special place in our history. T
he guys who worked there—Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Ronnie Garvin, Magnum T.A., Nikita Koloff and others— were all stars because of TBS … and because I was the guy in charge, like the captain of a ship. Before Eddie had died, I had a chance to make a tremendous amount of money running Jim Crockett Promotions.

  Facts are facts. Wrestling-wise, I went in and ran his company the way I saw fit. I had already gained power before arriving there, as I explained earlier, even helping them book their territory while still in Florida. But once I got there, I garnered so much power that I was able to do, with just a word, things that were just unheard of; things that revolutionized our industry, like Starrcade, The Great American Bash, The Crockett Cup, Clash of the Champions and War Games, to name a few.

  “‘The American Dream,’ Dusty Rhodes identified his physical liabilities and turned them into positives on his way to becoming one of the most famous wrestlers of any era. The son of a plumber from Austin, Texas, had a Texas-sized helping of charisma, passion and the overwhelming will to be the best in his chosen field. No athlete—and ‘The Dream’ was a very underrated athlete—in their prime better connected with the fans than Dusty Rhodes. Dusty gets a bad rap from some of his peers because of his in-ring prominence when he was the man in charge behind the curtain. But my guess is that not one of them would have positioned themselves any differently if given the opportunity. Dusty Rhodes is a Hall of Famer in my eyes.”

  —JIM ROSS

  But while we were revolutionizing the industry, in the shadows of the greatest promotion in history was a guy named Dave Johnson, a bookkeeper … an accounting person … a tax guy … who oversaw all the books there.

  To me the Crocketts were the North Carolina version of the Kennedys. They owned property. They owned baseball teams. They were a powerful southern family … phenomenal. And on the wrestling side, Jimmy Crockett paid unbelievably, but for a good reason.