Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  I was getting ready to say, “Now you’re fucking Cusperting me, like the old man Cuspert.” She’s ordering for me now like I’m an old man. I can’t imagine four or five years from now. Is she going to go deer hunting with me and open my case and get my gun out and load it for me? So she treats me like I’m an old man already.

  But that’s just shit married couples do.

  “Dusty has got a lot of good points. He’s a good father and a good provider. But the thing that gets on my nerves is he can’t conform. He can’t conform and he lives by his rules. His way is always the right way.”

  —MICHELLE RUNNELS

  Two years ago we went to Mexico and to me she’s amazing to look at. And I know she doesn’t know that, but she’s finding out now because I probably don’t say it enough to her … but just to watch her is still amazing to me after all these years.

  Mexico

  She laughed out loud

  She smiled so easily

  She had warmth

  She has had for 25 years

  As of late my dealings

  And things I do have kept

  That smile, that laughter from us

  Mexico reminded me

  Which I did not need reminding

  That my best friend was with me

  Maybe my only friend

  My lover and my partner for life

  Mexico was good fun for us

  It gave us a look at why 25 years ago

  We got married

  Mexico made the picture clear for me

  Mexico met Michelle

  Thanks, Mexico!

  —DUSTY RHODES, AUGUST 23, 2003

  The main thing about Chelle is, unlike me, if she found out that somebody who hated her or did something wrong to her, was on the street starving or really needed help or something, she would pick them up, take them home and help them. Like I said, she’s amazing that way. Mother Theresa, maybe not, but she’s a hellcat, man. She’s done just about everything that could be done.

  She’s given us some great kids in Teil and Cody and she couldn’t have raised the two kids any better, as they are tremendous, and she loves Dustin and Kristin—who were already two loves of my life—like they were and are her own and they love her too. It’s hard to say anything else except how amazing we feel and how 29 years together—28 married—it’s a phenomenal feat for two people who were as high strung and as crazy as we were when we were younger. We were nuts. But she was the only one who could keep up with me and sometimes I had to keep up with her.

  “When we were on the road, we traveled with the Giant a lot. We had a rental car, and it seemed like we were always together. He was a lot of fun, but he was rude as shit. He had a sticker on his suitcase that read, ‘If you get any closer, I’ll fart.’ Well this one time we were in New Orleans and they had a show at the Superdome, and Dusty’s mom had joined us for the trip. Well at 3 a.m. Andre called our room and told Dusty that Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett were down at the bar and wanted to meet him. So Dusty not only gets up and gets dressed, but he wakes me up and then calls his mom’s room to wake her up so all of us could go down there and meet them. When we went down to the bar it was deserted except for a cleaning woman who was vacuuming. Andre loved to rib Dusty.”

  —MICHELLE RUNNELS

  Chelle’s family is something else, too. Her dad, Ralph Rubio, is a great, cool guy, who is very close to his daughter. She also has two stepdads, Bobby Rodriguez and Tony Gonzales, since her mom remarried twice, and they’re all good people. While these names sound like they could come right out of the crime books in New York, when you start saying them like that, they’re actually not. Like I said, they’re all good people. But when I married her, just seeing the name Henry Gonzalez and Rubio and all at the Columbia, the wedding was like the white champion of the world marrying into this “family.” To an outsider, God knows what they must have thought, but who cared? From that point forward, her family and I would always be very close. It was a great time, and she was the one.

  As you know, I was married previously, and my ex-wife who still lives in Austin raised tremendous children in Dustin and Kristin. I’d be remiss if I did not mention Sandy. I know she loves our children and watches out for them and takes care of them, and she did a great job bringing them up. We had very little time that we ever actually spent together, with me being on the road, to the point that we hardly knew each other.

  But Michelle was without a doubt my best friend before anything else happened, then we fell in love. She’s the best friend I have. I have no other confidante than her. She’s got her own posse and it’s just her. I’m in her posse, buddy.

  “[Laughing] He’s a real pain in the ass.”

  —MICHELLE RUNNELS

  Dustin is my oldest child and like all my children, I love him with all my heart. But because my situation with him is such a volatile topic and an emotional thing, I’m going to discuss my relationship with him last.

  Like Dustin, my daughter Kristin is from my first marriage. And like my other kids, she’s a hell of a talent. She was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. She had tried out for the squad for four years in a row on different occasions, competing with something like 800 girls. But that is something that she wanted. Kristin is one of those people who says if I want to do something, if I have a dream, nothing can keep me from doing it. She is very strong-willed like that. She wanted to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and she kept trying and trying and trying until she finally made it. Then after doing it for two or three years she retired because she had accomplished what she wanted to.

  Kristin and her husband, Don Ditto, took a company from nowhere and made it into one of the top technology companies in the country. About four or five years ago, Dittcomm Technologies was featured in Fortune or Forbes or one of those magazines, as one of the top 300 independently owned companies in the United States. They’re based out of Austin with offices in Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston. They were very successful and they were young.

  The best way to describe Kristin is she is kind of like Maui if you go to Hawaii, because it’s so beautiful there. Well, all my kids are gorgeous, but she is drop-dead gorgeous, and Don is a good-looking young guy from Texas and they were kind of like the Barbie doll couple, Ken and Barbie. They were perfect. But Kristin is really high strung as far as having her opinions, and buddy, you don’t ever want to get into it with her. She knows exactly what she wants to do and she has her opinions and she’s very strong about them. She’s the strong one of that family, believe me. They live in a beautiful home out in the country in the hills of Texas, and she just gave us our second grandbaby, Dalton Wayne. Dakota, of course, Dustin’s daughter, was our first. Dalton is two years old now. That’s some cool thing, to have grandbabies like that.

  “My dad is a show stopper. He is the best at what he does. He started so young. He has a passion for the wrestling business and everyone knows about ‘The American Dream.’ He can go anywhere and they know who he is.”

  —KRISTIN DITTO, DAUGHTER

  I think deep down Kristin missed out on going to Los Angeles, out to Hollywood and being a movie star because she wanted that too, like Teil and Cody, my two youngest ones who I will get to in a bit. She had other priorities though; otherwise she would have done it. But I think she missed out on it and that’s why she backed Teil and Cody so much on going out there and chasing that dream. I think not a day goes by that she doesn’t wish she was in Hollywood somehow, because all four of them are the most talented kids you can be around, and they all have different ways of expressing their talent. Kristin is very strong and is going to be a great mom.

  “My parents got divorced when I was young and so I saw dad only a couple of times a year; a week or so during the holidays. He was gone all the time. He was always traveling. When we got together, it was nice, though. My relationship with my father really developed during my last few years of high school, as I was getting older and maturing more. I also have a wonderful relati
onship with my stepmom, Michelle.”

  —KRISTIN DITTO

  I think between the two of them, Kristin was better adjusted when they went through that period of time of being raised and I wasn’t there. I tried to make it up to them in a short, two-year period of time, and you cannot do that. Over time, however, we’ve become very close, Kristin and I. I think she had a half-ass understanding of it, and I would hope as we went along, that the hurt would heal. It’s hard to understand why your father is not around when he’s alive. You just can’t show up once or twice a year with Christmas presents and provide all the money that they need and expect everything to be made right. It doesn’t make sense to a child why you weren’t there for them and missed that time with them; everything from Little League to school work, all of that. Luckily God gave me the chance to come back and do it right with Teil and Cody, and that I was actually there for them all the way through school. I saw how strong the bond was with my younger two, and I know I should have been there for Dustin and Kristin, too.

  “He regrets leaving us behind, but that’s him. My dad is very emotional. It’s not like he was a deadbeat dad. I don’t look for faults in the past. Dustin spent a lot of his younger years crying because his dad wasn’t around. But they are different relationships—a father and a daughter, and a father and a son.”

  —KRISTIN DITTO

  But I was out being “The American Dream,” learning my trade and selfishly just not taking care of what really meant something to me. I love them all four the same, and more than anything else going.

  “My father has a huge heart. He’s always give, give, give to his children and grandchildren. He can come across kind of harsh though, and he used to be rude to people in order to protect his family. Growing up, Dad was popular, so he would be swamped everywhere we went. But when he was home, he did not want anyone to interfere with his time with the family. To me, he’s still my dad. I did understand where he was coming from and what he did—it wasn’t that he didn’t love me and my brother, he was following his dream. When the show was over, he always came home and afterward, always put his family first.”

  —KRISTIN DITTO

  They’ll either say, “I understand” and be okay sooner or later, or they’ll really be bitter about it the rest of their lives. I’m sure Kristin thinks about it a lot but, she’s not bitter about it. She understands. So I love her for that and I thank her for that. I thank them both, Dustin and Kristin for forgiving me for not being there when they were younger.

  “I never resented him not being there. It was different for Dustin, but the best way I can describe it is like you’re in the same car wreck, but you come out of it with different injuries.”

  —KRISTIN DITTO

  Teil, on the other hand, is a movie waiting to happen. She walks around being a movie. She looks a lot like a young Dyan Cannon with her hair the way it is. I was in Los Angeles with Teil and Cody recently since they are enrolled at the Howard Fine Acting Studio there, which is one of the bigger acting schools as they’re trying to make their dreams come true.

  But she is so naturally talented. Like Dustin was naturally talented for wrestling, she’s naturally talented just walking around. And she can’t understand why they haven’t already made her life story, why she’s not in another Gone With the Wind with her in the leading role because she doesn’t need to practice. “I don’t need to practice because I am that good.” Where Cody and Dustin work hard on their trade, and are very good at what they do, Teil knows the answers before they ask the questions. Now I know I’m being a bit facetious, as she needs to pay her dues, but I think she’s going to be a huge star out there … I really do.

  “When we were little he was gone a lot, not as much as when Dustin and Kristin were young, but he was always hands on when he was home. He was always supportive of all our aspirations no matter how outlandish they might have been. He never missed one of my plays or any of Cody’s wrestling matches. I think there’s a great strength knowing you’re loved so much. There was an effort to be a family. Christmases were always my favorite memory. Christmas and special days like birthdays, which were always fun.”

  —TEIL RUNNELS

  I know one thing, if she ever gets married, the guy who marries her or even dates her, better have a lot of money, buddy, because she’s high maintenance. She was carrying Louis Vuitton purses when she was six years old, before it was fashionable, when other kids didn’t even know what the hell they were. Kristin and Teil both have these bags and they will steal them from each other. If I give one a Louis Vuitton bag, the other will want one. Then they’ll find it at each other’s house and take them back and they’ll go back and forth like that. Jesus! Now I’m talking about all that in a funny way … it’s not like that’s what they live for.

  “It’s their fault because they raised me that way, especially him. Dad spoiled me. I could have asked for a pet monkey and could have worked on it with my dad. I remember going on the road with them and I’d have my little red suitcase. I had a little Louis Vuitton like my mom. I think the term ‘Princess’ is a fair assessment.”

  —TEIL RUNNELS

  Teil didn’t like school. Two of the funniest stories about Teil readers will find hard to believe. I wonder who she gets it from?

  She went for PE class one day, and it was very hot out. They were running the girls around the track, and Coach Day, Cody’s wrestling coach at Lassiter High School and a very close friend of the family, was teaching this class. Teil came out of the locker room carrying a parasol—like an umbrella—to trot around the track with; holding it so she didn’t get the sun on her. Well, Coach Day called us and said, “This girl … this isn’t going to work.”

  Another time she was playing softball. In slow pitch she didn’t get a hit but she walked a lot, though, and she was always messing with her hair. Well, one of my closest friends and members of the posse, J.D. Douthit, was coaching her, and he would try to get her to slide into bases and she said, “I am not sliding on these legs here. These legs are going to Hollywood.” This was back when she was like 14 or 15 years old. So she wouldn’t slide into the base because of that. Later she was a little older and playing fast pitch, and the girls she was playing against looked like they weighed about 225 pounds and are on steroids or something, and they’re throwing the ball like 100 mph. Well Teil came up to hit and she took the bat and rested it between her knees like she was going to hold it there just for a second while she adjusted her pants or something, but instead she took a brush out of her uniform, and while she was standing in the batter’s box, she started brushing her hair to put it up in a ponytail, and the pitcher threw the ball for a strike. The coaches and everybody were hollering at her and I was looking at this scene, shaking my head and saying to myself, “She is not going to be on the U.S. Olympic softball team.”

  I’m telling you, she’s a movie waiting to happen. She just has this knack. They would just walk her and she would trot down to first base. Now she did make a couple of big plays, and I remember that because I went crazy, but she’d always play the game. She sat on the bench most of the time, but they had to play them so many times over the course of the season, and she’d always do her thing. There was also always a big standing ovation for her because every boy in Marietta, in East Cobb County Georgia, who went to Lassiter High School, thought she was it; she was the one.

  “The [wrestling] business was part of our life. We always compare it to growing up in the circus. There are all these larger-than-life people around you, but it’s normal. It wasn’t until high school or college that I realized how different our unconventional growing up was. What a crazy environment to grow up in. But there was always so much love in our house. I think that’s why Cody and I are so grounded.”

  —TEIL RUNNELS

  This one time she lost the Miss Odyssey Contest. Now the Miss Odyssey Contest—to a parent—is like who do you know to have your ugly child win this Miss Odyssey Contest? It’s a bigger “work” than they s
ay our business is. It’s unbelievable. Teil was so beautiful and both of my girls could have won that thing if they would have went out there with no makeup on. Teil went out there—and it was always some big dress she had to have for whatever the occasion that would be a financial setback—and we were watching her and there was not even anyone close. Not because she’s my daughter, but because she really was beautiful. This girl who won it … and as a parent you want to stand up like a parent at the Little League game who just saw a bogus call and say, “Oh, this is bullshit! This is fucking bullshit!” You’re not knocking the other little girl, but you’re just saying, “Somebody’s got to know someone.” And then she was going to try to be a cheerleader. She really didn’t want to be a cheerleader, but she thought she did. Teil couldn’t do the jumping that she wanted to do, as she didn’t want to put that much effort into doing the jumping, so she lost that. Well, she thought that was the end of the world; her heart was broken.