Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream (39 page)

It was just a great time.

So really everything kind of came out of Florida, came out of that area, came out of that time. The Willie Nelson and Boxcar Willie concerts, David Allan Coe and Hank Williams Jr., being on the road and crossing paths with these guys, like Dickie Betts. Michelle used to say nobody played a guitar like Dickie and it was the coolest thing to see him play his guitar with the cigarette he was smoking, sucking the top of it while he’s playing on stage.

And of course Chelle’s family and the party that Henry Gonzalez threw for our wedding at that Columbia restaurant in Ybor City, it was right out of
The Godfather
movie. If you had the same music, it was the same thing, it was phenomenal.

Art Wiggins, who later passed away, was the president of the bank and he took Lee Roy Selmon, who was one of the Tampa Bay Bucs, who became a bank executive, under his wing. Hell, the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway is one of the city’s major thoroughfares, and in 2000, he partnered with Outback Steakhouse to open Lee Roy Selman’s, a restaurant that claims “Soul Satisfying Southern Cooking.” I think about that a lot, what it meant just to drive around Tampa and have everybody be a fan of yours. All of those guys
and all of those people I mentioned, that’s really what made Dusty Rhodes “The American Dream,” and what means the most to me.

I think about Michelle’s family and our current family, and Bobbi Ann, Bobby Rodriguez’s daughter. I call Bobby “Notorious” and “Black Robert,” names that you would only read in magazines that you probably shouldn’t be reading. But Bobby is a cool guy. And Michelle’s dad, Ralph Rubio, is the greatest Domino player of all time. When I think about it, he was in Cuba when Che Guevara came down the street and they were taking over Havana. He was still the manager of the hotel and the big casino at the time, before Cuba fell to Fidel Castro and communism.

Great stories, great times and an era that can’t be matched or duplicated, and so it’s our memories that we tend to savor and sometimes you just had to think back and see what you really remember. I always say that you have to give credit to the guys who brought you to where you are, they really brought “The American Dream,” Dusty Rhodes, to the dance. They were great times, great posse members and great senior members.

When you think about Tampa Bay, it’s always the Armory. It’s unbelievable, you just think of all the things that went down in there, angles, feuds, all the emotion that was in that place, the old dressing rooms, history, just great times.

But now, it’s an empty house.

The kids—Teil and Cody—have gone to California to be movie stars. Dustin is in Florida and Kristin is in our home of Austin, Texas. Michelle and I and Cody’s dog Goober are in what Cody calls our ancestral home in Marietta, Georgia.

I am still on the road with promoters. Bert Prentice and Bob Ryder were with me when my mom died two years ago; they are two of her angels because they watched over me.

My best buddies, Greg Troupe, David Qualls, Captain Lewis, Banny Rooster, Dallas Page, Senator Green and J.D. Douthit stay close too, along with my new posse, Big Tillie, Smoothie Kane, Ray Lloyd (aka Glacier), and Red River Pete (Keith Mitchell). They are good people, as are Peanut, Judy and Janie Engle.

I am working every weekend, writing on
Smackdown
. Mike O’Brien keeps me working; he is a good agent and we are friends.

The business has really changed. I can’t complain, because the new boys and girls have only learned one way to go at it in the ring. Every once in a
while one of them will surprise me and it gives me hope for our business. They are the future. They need to find a leader out of the pack or they will stay lost. I like them all. They are my kids, just like they are Hogan’s, Flair’s, and the Funks’, all of our kids!

Wrestling in the future will go on as I’ve said before. I won’t retire until Terry Funk hangs them up. He has semi-retired something like ten times. Oh well, the road is still my life and it always has been. Michelle has been with me the whole time. She is my strength, my drive, my best friend, and the thing I love along with my kids and grandbabies, more than life itself.

My dream is to go back in time to the old West, cowboy days, living on the vast land of Texas, riding the wide-open spaces.

God gave me the greatest gift of all, my children, and then let me make a living in the greatest business ever thought up by man. If I truly am a star, it’s all because of the people who made me—you, the fans! Without that roar, that sound of walking into the arena, that chant of your name, that knowledge that you did your best to entertain everyone there, it would never be worth it all. So to all of you I say, “Thanks for making
my
dream come true! I love you.”

To all wrestlers and wrestling fans reading this, just remember that the future is the past.

And finally to my co-author Howard Brody, thanks for working on this with me.

“L.A. Dream Land”

Morning breaks a new day
Providing us with chance
But only doers and dream makers
Will have the chance to dance

Break away from the smoggy morning
Clear the sky to blue
For in this L.A. dream land
Your dreams they wait for you

Leave nothing here to chance
For your trip down stardust lane
Make sure nothing is overlooked
That could keep you from your fame

Break away from the smoggy morning
Clear the sky to blue
For in this L.A. dream land
Your dreams they wait for you

—Dusty Rhodes, Los Angeles, 1994

E
PILOGUE

M
any of you are probably saying to yourselves, “Okay, Dream, that was great. But, what about tits and ass in this book?”

Well, for those of you who really want tits and ass, I came up with this story. …

It was a hot Austin, Texas summer. I was 16 years old and me and my boys were sitting around talking on a Wednesday night after running the streets all day. We were in the backyard under the big and bright star filled-night, when one of us, I don’t remember which one said, “Let’s go to Mexico this weekend.”

Well, due to the fact that they were all of Mexican heritage and spoke Spanish, I thought, “What the hell … why not?”

The plan was to tell our parents that we would be spending the weekend over at Ronnie Angle’s house, who was one of our friends. Ronnie, however, was out of town and we would actually leave on Friday after we pooled our money. We’d head to San Antonio, go down through Uvalde—the home of the infamous Uvalde Slim—and on over to the border. We’d cross at a border town and finally go to some bar and bordello. The word for years was that there was a show with a dog or donkey fucking a “lady of the night” on a stage and we were determined to see that. Holy shit! What a vision of grandeur and utter perversion.

The four of us headed out early Friday morning to see the dog and pony show in Mexico. I ended up getting sick after about four hot Pearl beers. To me Pearl beer always tasted like panther piss, whatever panther piss tastes like. The first day was fun, even though the front of my T-shirt, which read “Baseball All-American,” was now caked with vomit. The smell would start
a riot in Waxahachie, Texas. We took turns driving and by morning we were close to the border.

We stopped to sleep it off at an old Texas off road. At about noon the smell in the car woke us up and all of a sudden it didn’t seem to be as much fun anymore. The heat had hit the car like a fucking oven that had been left on for eight hours. You can imagine what it was like. We put some money together and bought something to eat, then washed our faces. I washed my shirt too, because I knew it would dry in about 30 seconds, which it did.

We reached the border around four o’clock Saturday afternoon and the plan was we were going to leave for home Sunday morning. Getting over the border was easy. As we drove through the dirty streets of old Mexico, we thought, “Hell, this ain’t much,” although our ‘55 Chevy fit right in with the ambiance.

We stopped and asked about this dog or donkey fucking show and everyone said it would be at the Texania Club that night. I saw federales everywhere. We killed about four hours drinking a beer or two in some real dive bars, but the party was about to pick up. We were feeling good again and ready to see this wild thing.

The time came and we got to the club. When we walked inside, it was like a scene right out of the Robert Rodriguez movie
Desperado
, it was dark until the neon lights came on. I had butterflies in my stomach as if I was playing in the seventh game of the World Series and batter cleanup for my beloved Yankees.

We took a table and all of the working girls came over and said something about me in Spanish. My boys would point at me and laugh. Shit, I was brutally handsome, white, and they knew I was a virgin.

Then the best-looking whore in the entire place came over and sat on my lap. By now we were roaring like the Wild Bunch. The whore said something in Spanish and one of my boys told me she wanted to take me to a room and do the deed with me. I asked, “Is it free?”

“Fuck no,” he said. “It’s going to cost about two dollars.”

Shit, I had ten dollars, so with wobbly legs and being half drunk, she took my hand and led me to a room.

The room had lit candles all around it, but it was still dark. The only furniture was a bed and a table that had a big washbowl sitting on it. I fell onto the bed.

She undressed.

The next thing that happened has to go down in history as the most unbelievable shit a 16-year-old boy could even imagine.

All at once, like an Olympic gymnast, she leapt on the table like a monkey leaping on the cage at the San Antonio Zoo. She straddled the bowl and began to splash water on her private parts.

“Holy shit!” I was so excited by the show that I shot the whole thing without ever taking off my jeans. I guess you could say it was the original “Dusty Finish.”

Next, the shit hit the fan.

Seeing what was happening, she began to curse at me in Spanish as she splashed the water faster. All at once she picked up the bowl and threw it on me … I guess to fucking cool me off. She quickly dressed, helped me up and led me back in the club.

As we walked in, the crowd was going crazy. My boys were standing on the table yelling, “Ole, Ole!” At this point I saw them leading a donkey off the floor. I had missed the donkey show.

“What the fuck. …”

She began to tell them what happened. I just let it go in one ear and out the other. Holy shit, I was embarrassed in a bad way.

The rest of the night was a blur.

Early in the morning we headed back to Austin. We made it home late Sunday night. Not much was said coming back as we mostly slept. But the trip to Mexico was not talked about again except only between the four of us … until now.

For those of you wondering, I have purposely kept the names of my amigos out of this story because I think one of them ended up marrying that whore.

So now every time I see someone splashing water in a bowl, the visions of that trip to Mexico vividly come back and I can’t help do anything but smile.

How was that for tits and ass?

C
LOSING
N
OTES

From Howard Brody

W
hen Dusty first told me he was signing a deal with Sports Publishing to write his life story, I literally offered to do it for free. What a mark, huh?

At first he was a bit hesitant, because at that point our relationship was seeded more in business than in friendship. But the more I tried to sell him on the idea, the more he accepted it, because he wanted someone to write about those things that only people inside the business could understand and interpret properly.

Although we had a great deal of respect for each other, it wasn’t until I began working with Dusty on the book that our friendship was solidified.

It was also during this time that we began formulating the context in which Dusty’s story would be told. Would we do it as a straight-up biography with names and dates and facts and figures? Or would we tell the story as if Dusty were riding down the road with a good friend and just saying what was on his mind? We chose the latter.

To know the Dream is to understand him. And what better way to understanding is there than locking yourself in a room with one of the greatest minds in the history of the business? We decided that the best way to tell his story was to let him say what he needed to say in the manner he was accustomed—idiosyncrasies and all.

Because the challenge was to ensure that Dusty’s voice and demeanor— and not that of a writer—came through loud and clear, it meant the difficult decision to allow certain things to be told and certain things to be left out. It was a hard choice, but if the essence of Dusty was to be properly captured, that’s just what had to be done, because that’s the way he conducts himself
when telling his stories. So all the blue talk, the tall tales, the “if you wills,” and the purposeful omissions of why he felt J.J. Dillon screwed him and how his feud with Ric Flair became legendary were all calculated decisions.

When I brought up the fact that he needed to address the sexual exploits of the business, suggesting that more T&A needed to be revealed in the book, or that he needed to address the infamous “Dusty Finish” somewhere between the front and back cover, Dusty responded with a very tongue-in-cheek, very ribald Epilogue that addressed both issues. It was his way of acknowledging the need to explain both, but doing so only in the fashion he felt appropriate. It wasn’t ducking or sidestepping the issues, but rather his way of “working the work”—perpetuating the larger-than-life legend that is Dusty Rhodes.