Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  The arena business was unmatched in our era. The amount of business we were doing was unheard of thanks to some of the most talented workers in the history of the business who busted their asses seven days a week and twice on Sunday. I was fortunate to be at the helm, steering the ship, and couldn’t have been more proud of our crew.

  Right around that time, this thing the wrestlers called “the sheets” started coming out, and all of a sudden there was a guy who had never been in our business, with opinions about our business, who catered to a small group of fans. Over time that small group has swelled into many, many fans, but at that point for the first time the business started to be unwound a little bit, it started to be exposed a little bit, it started to become, “This is what I think. …” It was almost like a reviewer of a movie and while others let these “sheets” influence their actions, I would never let the opinion of people who were not in our business sway what I believed.

  “Although I thought at the time Dusty could have helped some of us underneath guys make it to the next level or be more than just curtain jerkers, at least he gave me the opportunity to wrestle in order to make ends meet, and for that I was grateful. While some workers might be bitter at Dusty because they might feel he didn’t give them a shot, I’m not one of them. … I still regard him as a Superstar and one of the greatest creative minds in the business today. A lot of people owe him because he put money in their pocket. I think he takes a lot of undue criticism.”

  —RIKKI NELSON, WRESTLER

  Meanwhile, there came a time when we thought we were spending too much money on transportation to get the guys from one city to another and so we decided we needed to get some type of plane like any corporation doing a lot of travel would have.

  But we didn’t just get one plane, we got two, and from that point forward we lived like rock stars. The jet was the elite plane of the two and it would go across the country to places like Los Angeles or wherever else it was needed to go. One thing we didn’t need to do was stop in Las Vegas. But Jimmy always wanted to stop there. So if we were on a California swing, we would base the tour out of Sin City, flying back and forth every day. Like I said, we lived like rock stars in an unbelievable era.

  “When Dusty was the booker in Charlotte, I was there with Al Perez. As we were getting ready to get on one of the two planes, here comes Dusty driving up in his red Mercedes convertible. He started unloading a Haliburton, a Louis Vuitton and a Gucci bag to put on the plane. I looked at him and said, ‘Is all this necessary? Or are you really that busy?’”

  —PLAYBOY GARY HART

  Even the parking lot at Jim Crockett Promotions looked like a parking lot for the rich and famous. It was an auto collector’s wet dream from Magnum’s Porsche to his white Harley to Flair’s Mercedes to my Mercedes to the different trucks … everybody had a new set of wheels. Arn Anderson, who like me came from humble beginnings where he hardly had anything in his life that he didn’t earn, was driving a new Mercedes.

  “There was never a time that I wasn’t grateful for the opportunity to work for him. I’d call Dusty every Monday morning to thank him because that payday meant I could make my house payment. After a while he’d tell me, ‘I know you’re thankful, but you don’t have to call me every day to tell me.’”

  —GEORGE SOUTH, WRESTLER

  All of this happened over a relatively quick period of time. Why? Because stars like Nickla Roberts, better known as Baby Doll, became bigger stars that would all of a sudden be in magazines like The Wrestler or Pro Wrestling Illustrated. What a phenomenal run it was, and that was my job, to make people into larger than life stars.

  “You can’t disrespect anything about Dusty. I’m thankful that we were able to do something for the good of the company, him and me, year after year. He was in charge when the tidal wave came, and the one thing Dusty should know is in my opinion he grossly underestimated the ability of himself and some of us. We had the right players. If he would have played it a little differently, maybe the result would have been different.”

  —TULLY BLANCHARD

  My job was not to sit in there with Dave Johnson and tell Jimmy Crockett you’re five million dollars in debt. Like anybody in my position, I thought he would let us know if we could afford things or not financially. At the very least, he should have told the owner of the company. But Johnson waited one year to tell Jimmy. One fucking year … and back then Crockett knew five million dollars for a company as big as we were, was a big fucking hole to be in.

  While he got a hell of a deal from Turner at that time, Jimmy Crockett came to me and said, “I want out of Charlotte. I want us to move this office”—a big beautiful office—”to Dallas.” He said that.

  I said, “Okay, I’ll go with you,” because that’s home for me.

  It was not me who said we needed to move our operations to Dallas. Deep down I really believe he wanted to get away from the family thing. So he made that decision. Every financial decision that was made, he made. When it came time that what we were doing wasn’t drawing as much and our business was down a little bit, the bills were bigger, because now we were sitting in Dallas while the office was still open in Charlotte.

  Jimmy Crockett had a great vision of all this, but he was stuck with Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling people and their regional mentality. He had no young people. He didn’t have the people who just came out of Harvard or Yale who went to work for Vince, who were marketing geniuses. We missed so much on that. We were just in the arena wrestling business. We had no yellow fingers. The company remained very small-minded, even though both of us remained very big minded.

  So as far as I’m concerned, the fall of Jim Crockett Promotions was partly due to the way Jimmy handled the innerworkings of his family business and the way he financially mismanaged the office; we didn’t need the three secretaries who had been there forever.

  The one guy I felt bad for during this time was Sandy Scott, who was very loyal to me once we got to know each other. He could tell me whether a house was going to do 50 or 60 grand by the advance, and he would come in and say to me, “You’re doing the right thing,” or “You’re doing the wrong thing” … he’s the only one who could talk to me like that, because I knew he knew what he was talking about and I really cared about what he thought; he became my confidant there. Even more than Jimmy, it made me feel good when we’d draw a house to where I told Sandy this would draw or this would happen.

  There’s no denying that my mind was focused on running the 120 people—our family—in his company like a ball team, because that’s what it was like. Jimmy should have been concentrating on the other end, running the innerworkings of his company instead of driving down the road with me, drinking martinis and celebrating over big houses … because as big as the houses were, we were still going into the hole because of several moves that he had made outside of the industry.

  Like I said, the move to Dallas was his idea without a doubt, and he knows it to this day. As I understand it, he’s still there with his family, he’s very happy there, and I’m glad for him.

  But the Crocketts, as we knew them, kind of like how the Kennedys fell from grace, eventually came crumbling down like the burning of Crockett Park.

  It was a St. Patrick’s Day weekend in 1985 and I remember Klondike Bill, who was our ring guy, coming in and telling Jimmy at a show in Greensboro that a call just came in from the office to say Crockett Park was burning. Crockett Park was the stadium in Charlotte that the family owned along with the Charlotte Orioles, the minor league affiliate to the Baltimore Orioles, who played there. We had just done a big house in Charlotte and we had hired a limousine to go to Greensboro … a limousine to go 60 fucking miles instead of driving to the town ourselves … to drive back before the main event went on.

  It was like watching Gone with the Wind when Atlanta was burning. The sky was lit up. We could see it for miles driving back. We drove into the yellow taped-off section where you normally can’t even get in and the pa
rk was burning, smoldering. Jimmy opened the moon roof of the limousine and stood up. When he did, he looked like Napoleon looking out and over a battlefield as this wooden stadium was burning … and I jokingly said to Klondike Bill, “How much gas did you use on the park?” It was funny at the time, because obviously I didn’t mean it like that, but we had that feeling that we could do no wrong. Oddly enough, investigators later determined the cause of the three-alarm blaze was arson, and the fire was set by a small group of juveniles.

  So when they talk about the fall of Jim Crockett Promotions, it definitely doesn’t lie on my shoulders, because all of the time that I was there, there was money and planes and booze, enough of everything to go around for everybody. Everybody had a new car. Everybody had a big bankroll. I take as much blame as anybody as far as the wrestling part of it, but we lost a lot of guys to the WWF, and despite that we kept fighting and fighting and we were on par with them for a long time.

  But Magnum going down on the wrestling side cost a lot too, because I think he was that strong of a talent. He was the heir to the throne. He was the one who was chosen to lead us, and at the time Hogan was Vince’s choice as the two went head to head. I remember magazine covers with their pictures on them, the two fighters going head to head just like the two big companies were going against each other. When the Lord intervened and fate happened, the company went to shits; not just because of what happened to Magnum, but because of everything together that was going on at that time.

  So I think the real downfall was in the everyday operation of the company, the innerworkings, by this same little crew of people that was running this huge business. But it was no longer, “Let’s go run Charleston, West Virginia, let’s run Hickory, North Carolina” … it was now “Let’s run the Forum in Los Angeles where the Lakers play, let’s run the Cow Palace in San Francisco.” We were in the big arenas all over the country, and that was my job. Even with that said, I really believe that if Jimmy hadn’t sold the company, we could have turned it around. I remember saying to him we could get the five million dollars back, but I think he really wanted to sell it at that point in time.

  When we were in Dallas, Jimmy had given me a new Mercedes for doing the first million-dollar night for him, which back then was unheard of. That’s what he promised me and he got it for me. As the fall of the company happened, his sister Frances had the title and she had the car reclaimed. Because it was given to me by Jimmy and for what that car represented, I loved it so much, so before I let that happen, I paid the remaining portion of what was owed on it. I wasn’t going to let them take the Mercedes that Jimmy had given me; that I had earned.

  He was powerful, being the president of the company and the guy in charge, but small thinking on their part was what cost them in the long run. They can take a look back and actually pinpoint what happened to the NWA, Jim Crockett Promotions, and it surely wasn’t Dusty Rhodes. Where do you put the blame? I don’t know, but it surely wasn’t me. My part was done. My part is documented history. It’s on tapes. It’s on videos. You can see my work all over the world. It’s on ideas that Vince even took, and that’s okay too, because I would take some ideas from him. I think Jimmy’s vision was huge, but mine was bigger. I created some unbelievable stuff that still holds up to this day. It was an amazing triumph for me.

  “Dusty was a great leader and he instilled pride in the workers.”

  —”MAGNUM T.A.” TERRY ALLEN

  I was very hurt that Jimmy did not want to give a statement for this book if for no other reason than to help put this issue to rest. But I feel good about my era there and all the guys should be thankful that the Crockett era came along during that time, because there was nothing like it before and nothing like that will ever come again.

  So that’s that. A great time in our business that belongs to history.

  Then came the Turner era. And when people ask me about Turner, I tell them just what I think.

  I loved them … Ike and Tina Turner were the hottest group I can remember, Jack, and she had the longest legs, it was unbelievable! When she would do that little jumping up and down thing where her legs are moving and shit … “rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river. …” I loved them. I didn’t like Ike, but I loved Tina, man. Tina was so hot … Tina was during my era. When “The American Dream” was hot, she was hot. Tina was a hot black chick … Tina Turner, man. …

  Okay, seriously, let’s talk about Turner—Ted Turner.

  My history with Turner didn’t start when Crockett sold to him. We’d have to roll the clock back a bit, for as things heated up at Championship Wrestling from Florida, my career was also heating up. WTBS in Atlanta was cabled across the country, and as I explained earlier, I was its biggest star as I was in demand all over the country.

  Ted Turner was a self-made man. He was very strong and powerful and made his business in the independent television industry when others were only thinking about it. He had a vision of doing it and he did it; a maker of dreams coming true. Success was at his hands, as he took no defeat lying down.

  I say to this day that wrestling made TBS—Turner Broadcasting. Without a doubt, wrestling was one of the things, if not the single thing, that made his company nationally known. He could put around it all the blue and gray and civil war stories he wanted to make that didn’t draw any numbers, but he did them because he liked them and luckily he liked wrestling, realizing we also drew large numbers.

  In the early days he was a great friend to the business. He used to come down to the old studio and watch us put it all together. He knew it had viewers tuning in, and many times we’d be on right before the Atlanta Braves games, a strong lead in to his team, which became “America’s Team.” He gave me the opportunity to be his first “Golden Boy” as I mentioned previously, and it was really cool … and I thought he was cool, because he was a nobullshit guy.

  Only when America Online came in to buy Turner Broadcasting, and in the process WCW, did I see Ted kind of move down a little bit and not stand up. I don’t think he wanted to sell the company, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about him any. I was bitter because of the wrestling portion of it. Like I said, wrestling was used to build his empire and now it was being treated like the redheaded stepchild, the bastard division of the Turner family that nobody wanted to acknowledge.

  Then Turner South came along, not Ted’s per se, but he was instrumental in getting it off the ground, and David Rudolph, a 26-year-old executive with Turner who came up with the idea of the new network in the shower one morning, was appointed as one of the youngest company presidents. And what did producer and director John Perry do the first thing off the bat? All in the mold of the original TBS, almost like Ted saying, “Hey you want to get this off the ground?” … it was Atlanta Braves baseball, The Andy Griffith Show and a wrestling show starring “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes, called WCW Classics. It was the same formula, and the show that put Turner South on the cable map. Of course like they did through the early days, they dropped me when Vince came in and bought the wrestling company away from Turner, but the network continued to use me on different shows. So there it was, Turner South was created in Turner’s image and probably would have folded within a year if it hadn’t had been for wrestling … and of course being the egomaniac everybody believes me to be, if not for “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes hosting the hottest show on the network.

  But Ted was amazing. He not only had this vision … and I always considered myself having a vision of seeing things happen or doing things … not only did he have that, but he made it happen.

  TBS, Gordon Solie, Dusty Rhodes, it was kind of like the Cosell-Ali thing that I mentioned earlier, and we were so hot around the country cable-wise, it was amazing. 6:05, every Saturday night … then as the years passed I became WCW’s executive producer. They called it “booker” back then—I think some still try to call the guys who do wrestling bookers—but there are no more bookers, because that term was used when a perso
n in the business was booking a territory. The more appropriate term for the independent promotions today would be “match-maker” and if you’re heading up television, executive producer. Anyway, I became executive producer of everything that happened on the TV, and Turner gave me that opportunity. We did numbers for TBS.

  Ted’s a man’s man. The one story I remember vividly is about going to his office. Jim Barnett set up a meeting with Ted and me at the old studio on Techwood Drive. I was so hot on his television and he had just had his photo on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I was going into the meeting with the man the media dubbed “Captain Courageous.”

  I suppose being around all of those stars in New York for so long and having the discussions with Vince about movies and records, that I had this vision of doing television commercials, especially now with me being the hot commodity on cable that I was. This of course was before I got the Mellow Yellow gig, before it was fashionable for wrestlers to be in commercials, and I was thinking of something a little more elaborate than spots for the local car lot … “Hey, come on down to Yellow Bob’s and let’s buy a car.” The stuff I do today with Bill Butler down in Warner Robbins and Macon, Georgia, I’ve been with him ten years, and he has other holdings all over the area, so it’s not just a mom and pop thing down there, but it is in a way, and that’s what makes it great. I’ve been with him a long time with Chrysler and all that, even though I drive a Ford.

  Anyway, it was 2 p.m. and the receptionist said, “Mr. Turner will see you.”

  As I walked up the stairs I couldn’t help but remember the Saturday mornings Ted would come sit with us as we got dressed for wrestling in the makeshift dressing room in the very lobby I was waiting in for my appointment.