http://www.postandcourier.com/apps/...1109841/1177/the-triumphant-return-of-goldust
Two parts.
When Dustin Runnels made his pro wrestling debut in 1988, there was little doubt that the second-generation performer was going to make an impact on the wrestling business.
The eldest son of one of the sport's most charismatic figures, “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes (Virgil Riley Runnels Jr.), the youngster then known as Dustin Rhodes had all the tools to go with the pedigree.
A strapping, athletic specimen who broke into the business after graduating from Charlotte's East Mecklenburg High School, the 6-5, 220-pound rookie got his feet wet in his dad's old stomping ground of Florida, teaming with other second-generation wrestlers such as Mike Graham and Kendall Windham.
A short two years later, Runnels would find himself joining his father in the World Wrestling Federation. By that time, however, Dusty Rhodes was nearing the end of his run as an in-ring performer. Now parading as the yellow polka-dotted “Common Man,” the 45-year-old Rhodes was a far cry from his days as a three-time NWA world champion whose electric personality endeared his working-class hero character to a generation of wrestling fans.
Runnels, though, was eager and was immediately thrown into a hot angle on a Saturday Night Main event show.
“It seems like it was yesterday,” says Runnels. “That was quite a moment. I remember very, very clearly when Ted DiBiase opened me up hardway with that chair. I was like, 'Oh my God, what just happened to me?' This was the big time. Here we go.”
Several months after making his WWF debut, young Dustin Rhodes would be gone.
On Jan. 19, 1991, at the Royal Rumble, Runnels and his father lost to Ted DiBiase and Virgil in a tag-team bout. “Dad was leaving, and I wanted to follow him out right then. I asked for my release and (WWE owner) Vince McMahon said yes,” Dustin recalls.
As young Rhodes walked away, however, McMahon took Dusty aside. It was a conversation Dustin would learn of only later.
“Listen. You take him now, but I'm going to bring him back and make him a star,” McMahon prophetically told Dusty.
Several years passed, but McMahon was true to his word. Goldust, one of the most radical, revolutionary characters in the history of the industry, would make his in-ring debut in October 1995.
Never in Runnels' wildest dreams would he have ever envisioned the way McMahon would make him a star.
“Back then, I was just on a wrestling learning tree, following Dad around and trying to fit into his shoes. It was part of growing up, and later I learned that I needed to stretch my wings and kind of fill my own shoes because his were impossible to fill.”
Dustin still remembers the day he got the call from McMahon. Bruce Prichard, McMahon's right-hand man at the time, also was on the line.
“Are you sitting down?” McMahon asked Runnels.
“Well, I can be,” he politely replied.
McMahon went on to explain the gimmick that had been drawn up for Runnels. He told the youngster that the character, which would be called “Goldust,” would be androgynous.
“I had no idea what androgynous meant at the time,” says Rhodes. “I just listened to him and agreed to whatever he said.”
Runnels, figuring he had nothing to lose, was ready for a career change.
“Sure, let's give it a whirl,” said Runnels, who was looking to do something “outside the realm of the Rhodes family.”
“I wanted to do something on my own and see if this was possible.”
Travel plans were made, but first, Runnels wanted to check the dictionary.
“I wanted to find out what in the hell androgynous was,” he laughs. “Oh, man, look at what I just got myself into,” he said to no one in particular when discovering that the word was defined as “having both male and female characteristics or qualities; having traditional male and female roles obscured or reversed.”
Being a good old boy from Texas, Runnels took a couple of deep breaths and pondered the situation he had gotten himself into.
“I took a positive out of it, and said, 'Man I'm going to make this happen.'”
Peculiar personified
Runnels had spent the past several years working as “The Natural” Dustin Rhodes for Ted Turner's WCW. Returning to the then-WWE had some risks attached to it — not the least of which was completely revamping his character. He was, after all, the son of the legendary Dusty Rhodes. He had a reputation to uphold.
But that, ironically enough, was also a motivating factor, he says, in making such a switch. Runnels and his dad had not spoken in several years, and he reasoned that perhaps a major change was in order. That's not to say he wasn't apprehensive about the big move.
He was even scared at first of doing the gimmick, realizing that it would shock many people.
“Vince said he was behind it. But there were a lot of things going on up there with The Kliq and things like that ... I was worried. I was very scared. I had never been a bad guy. I've always been a babyface. They give me this character, and now I had to learn how to be a bad guy and do this androgynous stuff, which was way ahead of its time.”
Runnels introduced his new gimmick to a mixed reaction. He would be later accompanied by his then-wife Terri Runnels who, as the lovely seductress Marlena, played the role of a glamorous, cigar-smoking femme fatale that she had concocted to complement her husband's eccentric, gender-bending character.
With a flowing golden robe and gold face paint, Goldust wore a platinum blonde wig over his short platinum blond hair, with his appearance modeled after an Academy Award. The controversial performer appeared to be effeminate and loved to get into the minds of his foes with sexually suggestive interviews and antics in the ring.
In the beginning, says Runnels, nothing seemed to be working.
“I was learning as I went. It took five months, then six. Vince had told me to call him if I had any problems on the road. And I did ... more than a few times.”
Although Runnels removed the wig before his matches and exhibited his wrestling skills once the bell rang, the sexually ambiguous character was far from over with the audience in the beginning.
Terry Taylor (aka The Red Rooster), another wrestler whose career went spiraling downward with a questionable gimmick, jokingly called Goldust “a cross between dikk The Bruiser and Marilyn Monroe.”
Scott Hall, then known as Razor Ramon, refused to wrestle “The Bizarre One” because he feared it would hurt his image.
“I tried something one night about eight months into it while trying to figure out this character, and it worked. And it worked big,” says Runnels. “And I thought to myself, 'Wow. That was easy. Why didn't I get that sooner?' And I took that and ran with it.”
“It was cutting edge,” he says. “We pushed the envelope to where it was stepping and going over at times. And here we are. I've been through a lot of transition and changes with the character over the years.”
Eighteen years later, after numerous changes, some better than others, the Goldust character, which predated WWE's scandalous Attitude Era, is still alive in WWE.
“I'm just happy to be back and with my brother,” says Runnels.
Two parts.
When Dustin Runnels made his pro wrestling debut in 1988, there was little doubt that the second-generation performer was going to make an impact on the wrestling business.
The eldest son of one of the sport's most charismatic figures, “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes (Virgil Riley Runnels Jr.), the youngster then known as Dustin Rhodes had all the tools to go with the pedigree.
A strapping, athletic specimen who broke into the business after graduating from Charlotte's East Mecklenburg High School, the 6-5, 220-pound rookie got his feet wet in his dad's old stomping ground of Florida, teaming with other second-generation wrestlers such as Mike Graham and Kendall Windham.
A short two years later, Runnels would find himself joining his father in the World Wrestling Federation. By that time, however, Dusty Rhodes was nearing the end of his run as an in-ring performer. Now parading as the yellow polka-dotted “Common Man,” the 45-year-old Rhodes was a far cry from his days as a three-time NWA world champion whose electric personality endeared his working-class hero character to a generation of wrestling fans.
Runnels, though, was eager and was immediately thrown into a hot angle on a Saturday Night Main event show.
“It seems like it was yesterday,” says Runnels. “That was quite a moment. I remember very, very clearly when Ted DiBiase opened me up hardway with that chair. I was like, 'Oh my God, what just happened to me?' This was the big time. Here we go.”
Several months after making his WWF debut, young Dustin Rhodes would be gone.
On Jan. 19, 1991, at the Royal Rumble, Runnels and his father lost to Ted DiBiase and Virgil in a tag-team bout. “Dad was leaving, and I wanted to follow him out right then. I asked for my release and (WWE owner) Vince McMahon said yes,” Dustin recalls.
As young Rhodes walked away, however, McMahon took Dusty aside. It was a conversation Dustin would learn of only later.
“Listen. You take him now, but I'm going to bring him back and make him a star,” McMahon prophetically told Dusty.
Several years passed, but McMahon was true to his word. Goldust, one of the most radical, revolutionary characters in the history of the industry, would make his in-ring debut in October 1995.
Never in Runnels' wildest dreams would he have ever envisioned the way McMahon would make him a star.
“Back then, I was just on a wrestling learning tree, following Dad around and trying to fit into his shoes. It was part of growing up, and later I learned that I needed to stretch my wings and kind of fill my own shoes because his were impossible to fill.”
Dustin still remembers the day he got the call from McMahon. Bruce Prichard, McMahon's right-hand man at the time, also was on the line.
“Are you sitting down?” McMahon asked Runnels.
“Well, I can be,” he politely replied.
McMahon went on to explain the gimmick that had been drawn up for Runnels. He told the youngster that the character, which would be called “Goldust,” would be androgynous.
“I had no idea what androgynous meant at the time,” says Rhodes. “I just listened to him and agreed to whatever he said.”
Runnels, figuring he had nothing to lose, was ready for a career change.
“Sure, let's give it a whirl,” said Runnels, who was looking to do something “outside the realm of the Rhodes family.”
“I wanted to do something on my own and see if this was possible.”
Travel plans were made, but first, Runnels wanted to check the dictionary.
“I wanted to find out what in the hell androgynous was,” he laughs. “Oh, man, look at what I just got myself into,” he said to no one in particular when discovering that the word was defined as “having both male and female characteristics or qualities; having traditional male and female roles obscured or reversed.”
Being a good old boy from Texas, Runnels took a couple of deep breaths and pondered the situation he had gotten himself into.
“I took a positive out of it, and said, 'Man I'm going to make this happen.'”
Peculiar personified
Runnels had spent the past several years working as “The Natural” Dustin Rhodes for Ted Turner's WCW. Returning to the then-WWE had some risks attached to it — not the least of which was completely revamping his character. He was, after all, the son of the legendary Dusty Rhodes. He had a reputation to uphold.
But that, ironically enough, was also a motivating factor, he says, in making such a switch. Runnels and his dad had not spoken in several years, and he reasoned that perhaps a major change was in order. That's not to say he wasn't apprehensive about the big move.
He was even scared at first of doing the gimmick, realizing that it would shock many people.
“Vince said he was behind it. But there were a lot of things going on up there with The Kliq and things like that ... I was worried. I was very scared. I had never been a bad guy. I've always been a babyface. They give me this character, and now I had to learn how to be a bad guy and do this androgynous stuff, which was way ahead of its time.”
Runnels introduced his new gimmick to a mixed reaction. He would be later accompanied by his then-wife Terri Runnels who, as the lovely seductress Marlena, played the role of a glamorous, cigar-smoking femme fatale that she had concocted to complement her husband's eccentric, gender-bending character.
With a flowing golden robe and gold face paint, Goldust wore a platinum blonde wig over his short platinum blond hair, with his appearance modeled after an Academy Award. The controversial performer appeared to be effeminate and loved to get into the minds of his foes with sexually suggestive interviews and antics in the ring.
In the beginning, says Runnels, nothing seemed to be working.
“I was learning as I went. It took five months, then six. Vince had told me to call him if I had any problems on the road. And I did ... more than a few times.”
Although Runnels removed the wig before his matches and exhibited his wrestling skills once the bell rang, the sexually ambiguous character was far from over with the audience in the beginning.
Terry Taylor (aka The Red Rooster), another wrestler whose career went spiraling downward with a questionable gimmick, jokingly called Goldust “a cross between dikk The Bruiser and Marilyn Monroe.”
Scott Hall, then known as Razor Ramon, refused to wrestle “The Bizarre One” because he feared it would hurt his image.
“I tried something one night about eight months into it while trying to figure out this character, and it worked. And it worked big,” says Runnels. “And I thought to myself, 'Wow. That was easy. Why didn't I get that sooner?' And I took that and ran with it.”
“It was cutting edge,” he says. “We pushed the envelope to where it was stepping and going over at times. And here we are. I've been through a lot of transition and changes with the character over the years.”
Eighteen years later, after numerous changes, some better than others, the Goldust character, which predated WWE's scandalous Attitude Era, is still alive in WWE.
“I'm just happy to be back and with my brother,” says Runnels.
