Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream

by Dusty Rhodes

  The thing about Teil is, in a way she’s like me deep down because she has no prejudice whatsoever. She has a tremendous amount of African-American friends, both girls and guys, and there’s never been a line drawn with her and she can’t understand anybody who doesn’t understand that. For example, George W. Bush. She knows I voted for “W” and it eats her alive. She cannot stand him. But the biggest thing she has in common with me is she’s a huge Yankee fan! She loves Derek Jeter, and we never miss a Yankee game together when we have the opportunity.

  “Sometimes dad gets a raw deal. For all the success he’s had, he worked very hard. Nothing was handed to him. His work ethic was so strong. There’s a misconception of him by total strangers. He really is kind and has a big heart. In his business I think it’s rare to find such a standup, loyal person. His character is exemplary. He has pride and dignity. What a dedicated, family person.”

  —TEIL RUNNELS

  So both of those girls are just the most talented, special people any father could have. They’re tremendous.

  “I think all of us are performers. We are performers. No matter how that manifests itself, it’s influenced by him.”

  —TEIL RUNNELS

  Which brings me to my youngest son, Cody.

  Cody was a two-time State of Georgia high school wrestling champion who now has his sights set on acting. I call him the hardest working man in show business, because once he puts his mind to doing something, there’s not anything at all that will stop him. I remember reading in a book this guy wrote about the last season that he wrestled—he said that when he walked into a gymnasium, it was like he had walked into an alley that was dark and you were scared when you walked in there because you had seen him step out of the shadows and you pissed your pants. Well, Cody had that ability to instill fear into his opponent that he learned; he had an intimidation on the mat and in the gyms.

  “When I was wrestling, my opponent’s parents wanted their kids to beat Dusty Rhodes, not Cody Runnels, so the pressure was on them. When you’re born into that type of situation, you’re almost given a choice to step out of that shadow. There’s nothing selfish about matching or being better than your famous father. That would motivate me … get my ire up. I’m my father’s son. I never complained about it, because it made me stronger.”

  —CODY RUNNELS, SON

  When he walked into a high school gym, in his junior and senior years, you knew who he was. He was like a rock star and he owned it, he owned that place. He would walk around for two to three hours before his match, with headsets on, just walking around the gym, while everybody else was laughing and joking and training, and of course the guy he was going to wrestle never took his eyes off of Cody, and so he was already beat. The guy was so intimidated because Cody was the most menacing wrestler I think I’ve seen on an amateur scale, ever, and I think a lot of local reporters have written that about him. So to beat him, you had to beat him. He wasn’t going to beat himself. He was amazing in that aspect, but he loved drama too, and watching his plays with his school as well as watching him wrestle was equally exciting. When it came down to having to make a choice, he chose drama, also at the Howard Fine Acting Studio in Los Angeles.

  Cody and Teil shared an apartment in L.A. as they went there together to chase that dream. Since she had already completed college while he was finishing up high school, she waited on him. He’s 20 years old and she’s 24. I think he’s the next big thing out there. A lot of people say that, but I think he is because of his work ethic—it’s so amazing … unbelievable … I can’t imagine that.

  “When I discontinued playing football and said I just wanted to wrestle, my dad supported my decision with reluctance, because he was unsure if I was going down the right path. He wanted to see the work and not the talk. He wanted to see the actions. Now when I made my choice for acting, he was less reluctant about me going to Hollywood because he saw my earlier decision flower into the right decision.”

  —CODY RUNNELS

  The funny thing is that both of them weren’t worth a shit in school. They got through school to get through school. I remember the Penn State coach wanted to know what Cody’s grade point average was for wrestling, but Cody knew he was going to go to California; he was headed there. He doesn’t like California that much, but he knows he’s got a job to do, and he’s going to get it done. He’s going to do his thing and make it happen.

  Like Dustin, he was just a little pretty baby when he was born. He loves wrestling. He saved all the dolls. He watched all the matches. He went through that whole phase. I could always tell through him if wrestling was hot or not, because he’d be watching both shows: Nitro and Raw, with a clicker, and pretty soon you didn’t hear the clicker. When that happened, you could tell one of those shows were not as hot. Then when he stopped talking about wrestling with his friends, you knew it was bad.

  “You don’t know my dad’s a celebrity unless you ask someone else. He’s actually a very humble person. My dad’s fame has this mystique … it’s like a Cuban cigar, so you know it’s the best. In The Odyssey Homer describes certain gods as ‘Earth Shakers’ and my dad was like that in the wrestling biz. He was an ‘Earth Shaker.’”

  —CODY RUNNELS

  Cody and Dustin both taped all of their early matches that they put together in the backyard. They did the same things in our backyard that I did in my parents’ backyard, except we didn’t have any videos back in the ‘50s. But they did the identical thing I did. They promoted matches, both of them. It was amazing to see how they kind of did the same thing that I did when I was a kid about the business. And then Cody of course, in his junior year in high school, refereed his first Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling match, like Dustin did when he was younger. But Cody wanted to be in a different industry, and I think that’s good.

  “Wrestling is all I wanted to do and the only thing I thought I was going to do. Watching WrestleMania and the Academy Awards were the two things that gave me chills. In my own personal time, I think I could—as dad calls it—tell a better story wrestling, but at this time I want to concentrate on acting and eventually win an Oscar.”

  —CODY RUNNELS

  When Cody got his first truck, we bought him this $9,000 old Chevy. It had all the lifts and everything, so then it cost $22,000. The motor blew up, so I’d say it eventually cost $25,000. Like I said, we paid $9,000 for it and sold it for $7,000, so I really lost my ass on that truck. But you knew it when you saw him coming.

  And he’s like Dustin in that they’re drop-dead handsome guys. He’s got the cold blue eyes and a look that’s amazing. But I think one of his best attributes is that he’s a great writer and has published a couple of poems, even as a young high school student in the big artsy books that are published in Atlanta, and he’s very deep in what he says and what he believes.

  Remember

  Remember the sound of bacon crackling, me rushing to make morning tasty for you…

  Remember the tears that come from my solid, broken only by you…

  Remember my trembling lips, as you teased me with a first kiss you have forgotten…

  Remember the clock hands that danced in circles, the time I handed to you…

  Remember the flash bulbs, my hands raised high, I had conquered, without you…

  Remember the soft drops that fell from your eyes, in fear you might lose me…

  Remember the love that drove that fear, the love that encompassed me and you…

  —CODY RUNNELS, ARETE, LASSITER HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE, FALL 2003

  He’s always on me and Teil about stuff, like the Yankees. Whether he likes the other team or not, he’d call Roger Clemens a fat ass during the World Series when they played the Marlins. He’d do it just to make me mad. He’d say shit like in 2004 Roger Clemens went over to Randy Johnson’s house to have dinner and not only stole his dinner, but his Cy Young award off his table and took it back to Texas. He’d just say stuff like that.

  I remember Cody breakin
g his leg, it was after Little League and he was 12 years old. He broke it riding a four-wheeler out behind our house on a hill. I heard it running and then I heard it stop, and then I didn’t hear anything. He got up and tried to walk. He had broken his leg, and Dustin had broken his leg on a four-wheeler too, when he was younger. Those things are pretty dangerous.

  Anyway, he’s close to his brother and sisters. He takes great pride in taking care of Teil out in California, or should I say he thinks he is, and Paul Jones, my very close friend with Limited Brands helped get them jobs in loss prevention out there, and he takes them out to eat, watches over them for me and Chelle. Even Dallas Page, who I was kind of a mentor to, is kind of Cody’s mentor. Cody understands him, but knows where to draw the line with Dallas, and they are very close.

  “Dad always says and puts family first. It’s not just rhetoric. He still has his family to take care of. I’ve had the best two parents possible. Dad is the ultimate family man in an unconventional manner. … I can’t think of him as anything but a family man.”

  —CODY RUNNELS

  So Cody’s a kid who almost tried too hard to achieve that goal instead of just letting it fall into place. So, it’s cool.

  Okay, now with all that said, it’s time to talk about my eldest son, Dustin, and you better pay close attention, because this is only going to be said and written about once.

  There are a lot of stories about Dustin and me, whom I love and am so very, very proud of. But of all those stories, there’s only one that the fans of wrestling really want to know about, and so I am going to bare my soul and tell it like it is.

  For five years, a piece of my heart was missing. It was the hardest thing in the world for me to go through, because I knew I fucked up. But I also knew deep down, that with time, patience, understanding, and the grace of God, that deep, deep wound would eventually heal, and Dustin and I would be closer than ever.

  For years I did not want to talk about this, and I couldn’t because the hurt was that deep. When we were in that place, emotionally, I had refused interview after interview with wrestling magazines, with The New York Times, with everybody, not only because it was so upsetting for me to discuss, but for fear that if I talked about it openly while it was still going on, I could somehow damage the chances for future reconciliation. I was not willing to risk losing my son and granddaughter forever.

  Many people who really didn’t understand the relationship between Dustin and me, thought the feud between us became public when he went on his own and became “Goldust,” a character that seemingly mocked me and my old “Stardust” persona. But in reality, the Goldust creation that he and Vince put together was creative genius, because it allowed Dustin to feed off of an emotion and step out of my shadow and be his own person … and that made me proud. When anybody would ask me how could I be so proud of him for doing that, I’d say because I understand the wrestling business.

  While it’s true that Vince tried to play our emotions at one point and attempted to get me to do an angle with Dustin—and it would have been very easy to go there and make a million dollars because I was in need of money at the time—neither one of us would shoot that angle for Vince or anybody else to draw money on this real-life family battle that was going on. Even today, as close as we are, we wouldn’t do it because it would hurt everything that Dustin worked so hard for to establish his own name. But that battle was festering for a long time, and it actually came to a head when I was in full control at WCW.

  Terri Boatright was a makeup artist there. I knew she had talent when I first got there, as she was a manager for Terry Taylor doing the Alexandra York character. She had a great knack for wanting to move up. She didn’t want to be mediocre, she wanted to be on top, but I paid little attention to her.

  Well, one night I was in a hotel room, and Dustin showed up and said that they were going to get married. I was drunk and just went off on him, because in my opinion they were not right for each other and that’s all that needs to be said. But Dustin loved her to death, and the more I said, the worse it probably would have gotten. So I kept my mouth shut and I accepted Terri as my daughter-in-law. All I cared about was that she was going to be a good wife to Dustin and a good mother when they had kids. Whatever happened between them is their business, because in my opinion the best thing that came out of that marriage was that it gave Chelle and me a beautiful granddaughter; my first grandbaby, Dakota.

  Anyway, Dustin had all this resentment building in him from when he was younger, and the whole thing came to a head over a golf game or something when he said Terri had a headache and he couldn’t go with me. Well, things were said that shouldn’t have been said on my part, and all the resentment on his part came pouring out like an open water hose.

  They were powerful times, they were powerful moments, and powerful things were said, and as that went down, Terri would write me these letters saying what an unbelievably bad father I had been to Dustin and that he would never speak to me again. It ate my fucking heart out. I felt she was pushing him away from me, but Dustin was in on it at the time, so they were hard times for us, rocky times that we eventually worked through.

  As time passed, Teil and Cody were getting older and I was also closer to Kristin now. Dakota was growing up, and Chelle and I wanted to see our grandbaby. But not seeing Dustin, I got really depressed not having him around; really discouraged, especially since I could see him on TV.

  Dustin was the most gifted, the most natural worker there was, probably one of the top five wrestlers in our business today, and without a doubt, the smoothest. He and Barry Windham are two of the most natural athletes to come into our industry systematically. Anyway, with that said, I was going to fly to a town and I always had a fear or big knot in my stomach that I would see Dustin at the airport or something, and sure enough it came to pass. About four years after the big blow up, he was standing in line at Delta Airlines in Atlanta and I walked up, and he turned around, and we spoke for the first time in a very long time. That didn’t mean jack shit to anybody, except to family, and we started talking about what had happened between us and it was just an amazing, surreal moment, and when we were done, we went our separate ways.

  Shortly after that I gave him a call and for all those years of me being this dominating figure, this controlling guy that I am perceived to be by many, who usually dominates our conversations by never letting him talk, never letting him say what he needed to say, it finally came to a head on the telephone.

  He said things to me that I can tell myself, but I couldn’t even say to his face. I couldn’t even repeat some of the things that were said to me about what he wanted to do with me. It was amazing, shocking, but he had to get it off his chest to heal. Not one word. But once he got it all out, once he finally got all that out of his system, I knew for the first time we legitimately might have a chance to patch the thing up, because for the first time I listened to him … and I agreed with him.

  “I’m not one of those people who can come off the cuff with words with your father. I was very intimidated by my father. He was very intimidating … and he still is and I love him to death … and I would never cross that path again, ever … so I started writing stuff down like a script to tell him over the phone. When the call finally happened, for the start of that five-year stint, I read everything off the piece of paper … I was scared to death and so fucking nervous my heart was beating, butterflies were racing, but I told him this and that and that was it. Boom! That was it! I didn’t talk to him for five years. That was a tough five years. I regret the decision that I made, but I made it. I’m the one who did it. I can’t put the blame on anyone else. I blame myself for that. But I regret it and it was tough.”

  —DUSTIN RUNNELS, SON

  “You’re right. …” What could I say about a guy who takes off for 14 fucking years except for a visit here and there, while his son’s whole life he’s felt that way? I can say a lot about guys in the wrestling business, but I wasn’t any better t
han they were in that respect.

  Now that I was older, I wanted my children to be close to me. I wanted them to be a part of my life, and I wanted to be a part of theirs, and that comes to pass with just about everybody who has been in that position as they get older. And like a wish on a shooting star that came true, it finally was made possible, and Barry Windham was involved in helping me make it happen.

  I was still with WCW and we were at the Jacksonville Coliseum. We were doing this angle with the late Bobby Duncum, Jr. who was doing the good old boys thing with Curt Hennig, Barry and Kendall Windham, and that’s what was going down on this particular day. They were going to shoot this video of them riding bikes on Barry’s property, which was real close by. Well, Dustin had just bought a new truck and Barry talked him into coming over. I didn’t know this and I didn’t even know where Dustin lived at that point. Well, Barry came in and walked over to me and said, “Dustin is in the parking lot. He wants to see you.”

  “I was on Barry’s property when they were shooting this video, just hanging out with him and having fun and he said, come on to Jacksonville. Dad was there, though. I thought about it for a little bit and at this point it was like, what the hell. I’m making good money, who gives a shit? So I pulled into the back of the Jacksonville Coliseum, Barry and Curt are standing out back and Barry went inside and told dad that I was there and I was like, oh shit … first time I’ve seen him, talked to him in five years … about 15 minutes went by or so and here he comes walking outside. It was one of those moments that you can’t explain to anybody … it’s so electrified and so scary too, at the same time. He started walking from the back door of the Coliseum and I was back up there kind of by the gate sitting in my truck … and he was walking toward me with his head down and walking toward me with his hat on and he didn’t stop, and I was looking at him and I was like, God, oh God … what the hell … scared to death and wanting so much and my dad … my dad walked up and he grabbed me, and … Barry and Curt, they walked off .”