Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream (4 page)

Good Lord, it was like a free for all. The thing about my neighborhood was that it was rough living on the east side of Austin. You walked everywhere you went, and we kids had a bond. We were out on the streets at night but we weren’t scared. Sure there were gangs and street fights and stuff like that, but it was survival and it was fun.

I think when I look back on those times the reason I started getting into athletics was really an outlet for me to get away and try to work myself into something that I loved.

“Dusty has always been his own man. He had to overcome a tremendous amount of adversity. He was a great role model and he’s still a great role model, and I idolize him. I always looked up to him. I even played football at the same position he did.”

—L
ARRY
R
UNNELS
, B
ROTHER

One of the things I loved was wrestling. Pro wrestling had a tremendous influence on me, and because it did at an early age, I became the wrestling promoter of the neighborhood, something I did for about three years. There were a lot of kids who lived on that street. All the neighborhood kids would come out and Connie would charge them I think one penny apiece or whatever it was. This backyard wrestling wasn’t jump-off-the-barn
wrestling—the stunt maneuvers used by the majority of the young kids nowadays in the business. It was backyard professional wrestling. Professional wrestling is not stunts; it’s storytelling in its purist form. I think stunts are great because I think it sometimes borderlines wrestling, but all it really, really is is stuntmen doing dangerous shit.

“When I was a little girl, my dad and grandfather got me a horse and the horse was really, really mean. We had this old shed out in the backyard and I’d do anything Dusty’d tell me to do so he got me on the roof of the shed and he and Larry would run the horse around and around in a circle and he’d be down on the ground hollering up to me, ‘Jump! Jump! Just like on TV, jump!’ He tried to kill me. Growing up with him was bad. There were times that I thought I was close to death.”

—C
ONNIE
J
ONES, SISTER

Anyway, we needed to build a ring and we only had two green water hoses, so I sent Connie next door to steal a couple of water hoses from our neighbor. She came back with this real long red one, and Larry came in the yard with some cedar posts he had gotten from somewhere. I had the shovel, the posthole digger if you will, and I began to bury the posts and build the ring. After we put the cedar posts in the ground, we nailed the water hoses around them to make our ropes. You couldn’t hit them or anything, but now we had a ring. The grass was the canvas. I recruited the neighborhood kids to be on the card.

Like I said, it was always Friday nights when my dad would take us to the city coliseum to see pro wrestling. It was a thrill and it was always a tradition. So boy, this was great because I got to be the promoter, the booker, and the champion. I would also be the ring announcer.

It was 1957, and on this particular morning we were lucky because there were no rain clouds in sight; of course this was one of my first big “outdoor” shows.

We always had the kids play the different wrestlers like the Zebra Kid, who was a bad guy, or the Kozak brothers. On this one particular event, my brother, Larry, was Nick Kozak, who was a young wrestler in Texas at the time, and who I actually got to work with later on, along with his brother Jerry, when I started in the industry. The Kozaks ended up becoming friends of mine and they kind of helped me along.

Of course I was Lou Thesz, the champion. Whether he was champion or not at that time didn’t matter. He was the big hero back then, and so I just beat the shit out of my brother because he was a little smaller than me. We then just paired up the other kids and let them go have a little time of it.

The ropes would always fall if you hit them, and the cedar posts were not dug in deep enough to stay straight. But none of it mattered as we had a tremendous amount of fun, and I cherish those times in the backyard with my family. The water hoses weren’t worth shit after that, and as you probably guessed by now, I would get my ass whupped … literally get my ass whupped over it.

Of course back then as I got older I played in all sports, whether it was football, baseball, basketball, running, jumping, swimming. … I was an all-star baseball player and I really felt that I would play Major League Baseball. My dad, of course, believe that too, because in 1954 a big star for the New York Giants, Dusty Rhodes, became very famous for hitting home runs in the World Series. Since I’ve always been called Dusty because of the road outside our house and the fact I hit something like 16 home runs in 18 games one year, we thought that was my destiny. I was a real power hitter as far as that went.

“My dad was real superstitious and one time we were going over to Waco to see Dusty play football and a black cat ran across the road. Daddy almost wrecked the car and all the cars around him were trying to get off the road because he didn’t want to cross the path. He actually drove around back to another highway and came around in another direction to get to Waco because he would not cross the road where that black cat had gone and he wasn’t going to miss that game.”

—C
ONNIE
J
ONES, SISTER

I wasn’t always Rhodes, but I was always Dusty. I was never called Virgil, not by my family, not by my friends. Even my teachers at school didn’t call me Virgil. But I do remember very distinctly about the dusty roads thing and I know when I broke into the wrestling business, “Bulldog” Danny Pleaches—one of the lieutenants for the Dallas territory who took a liking to me—tagged that last name on when I told him the story of where we lived and my dad’s favorite player. That’s how I became “Dusty Rhodes.” Thank God for “Bulldog” Danny Pleaches.

Anyway, those were times that I cannot forget. They were just amazing, and back then my dad was amazing. My God, when I realize what he was fighting for, what he was working for and he wasn’t a drunk or an alcoholic … he was just a violent Indian, and that’s what he was. And despite the whuppings, he loved his kids.

If he had only $14 and there was this red wagon you wanted and it cost $14, but that meant the whole week we would go with no food or anything, he would buy the wagon. Now that’s not cliché or bullshit, because that actually happened, and I was the one who wanted the wagon.

He influenced me, but I wasn’t as close to him as I should have been. I’m ashamed to say that I should have been closer to him growing up. Sure, I worked for him and deer hunted with him, but there’s more to a father-son relationship than that. I wish I would have been closer to him as time went on, but I still remember him vividly when I think back about those times. I think I grew to love my dad more after he passed away than while he was alive. I know that whatever he did, he did because he loved his children very, very much. And that parent-child love goes both ways. I suppose that is why I am so grateful today that my son, Dustin, and I have been able to mend our differences and are closer today than ever before … but more on that later, too.

Virgil Runnels Sr. was only 56 years old when he passed away. Toward the end he was a very sick man, having smoked a box of Tampa Nugget cigars a day. He died of emphysema, but I think he was just worn out. The day he died, later that evening, his first grandson, Dustin, was born. That was an emotional time for me, and that’s why I always said Dustin was a very special child; you learn a hell of a lot about yourself in a quick way.

As for Mom, she knew when her time was up. She told my sister, “Call Larry and Dusty. Get them here.” How do people know it’s the end?

Just three weeks earlier, I had walked in on her and her eyes had lit up. We played cards, laughed, and just talked. Driving home to Atlanta from Texas I thought I would see her again. I didn’t.

On day two she was waiting on me. It went downhill quickly from there.

I was in a fucking dressing room with people I really didn’t know when the call came from Connie that she was gone.

Say whatever you want about these two people, but I will always think of Bob Ryder and Bert Prentice as my mom’s angels, because they were there emotionally for me when the call came. Bob offered to drive me from
Nashville to my home in Atlanta … and that wasn’t some empty offer, it was genuine. Thank you, guys.

My mom knew … she knew and she wanted her sons by her side. We were too late. My mom was very special and even in the end she called the shots— she knew it was over. I love you, Mom.

Katherine Runnels, God bless her soul, passed away on June 7, 2003.

C
HAPTER
3

I
grew up, went to college, and became a pro wrestler! I wish my life was that simple to sum up.

Being able to talk about the past means we are here in the now! I really don’t want to bore you, but some of the tales are really funny, sad, and at times unbelievable.

As I was kicking around West Texas State College in Canyon, Texas, in 1966 and ‘67, the school’s favorite sons were Terry Funk and Dory Funk Jr., sons of the very famous Dory Funk.

They had the Amarillo Territory … Amarillo, Lubbock, El Paso, Odessa, New Mexico, you get the picture.

Every Thursday night Amarillo ran at the fairgrounds and Frank Goodish—who would later become Bruiser Brody—Bobby Duncum, and others would go with me. Goodish bounced with me at the Bat Cave nightclub so we would have a little money. It cost about $1.50 to get in. Bobby would bale hay with me for some of the ranches in the area to get our money to go.

During that time I had a chance to see some great wrestlers, and young Terry was the Nick Barkley of pro wrestling. Nick Barkley was a character on the TV show
The Big Valley,
which was popular at the time. Terry would later become my rival and mortal enemy in the pro wrestling ring for more than 30 years.

We would wait to see who was coming in the next week. One time there was a sign hanging from the rafters with the date on it saying, “Coming: The Sheik.” Man, that was promotion … if you read the wrestling magazines, you knew that The Sheik was the baddest motherfucker this side of Saudi Arabia, much less Tulia, Texas. You also knew that he would kick the shit out
of Terry, and the old man would meet him the following week! Man, I couldn’t wait. …

However, it would be another year or so before I crossed paths with the Funks.

Meanwhile, it was now 1967, and being fresh out of West Texas State University, I went to play football for the Hartford (Connecticut) Charter Oaks of the (now-defunct) Continental Football League. Twelve games into the season, however, with a record of 5-7, the team folded, and there I was, stuck in the fucking Northeast with a Mustang that had no heat or air conditioning and only $35 in my pocket.

I remember seeing a newspaper ad for pro wrestling at the Boston Arena Annex and decided to give it a shot. Hell, I knew I was big enough and tough enough, so I went down there, and wearing my boxing shoes from when I fought in the Golden Gloves, I made my pro wrestling debut against Bull Montana. The local champion was this cat Frank Scarpa. I wrestled three shots in the Massachusetts area and made a whopping $36! That’s 12 dollars a fucking match! What the fuck is that? And those early matches were bullshit, because they were like my training. In my mind my first real match was the one I described earlier against Reggie Parks.

I will say this, though, even as shitty as it was back then, I was hooked. I was hooked on the business like a $20 whore on crack. But I was also broke as shit, and if not for my credit card—my Gulf Oil credit card, if you will— to get me by, I don’t know what I would’ve done.

So, that’s when I started my trip back home to Austin. “Get me the fuck out of Dodge!” And I almost made it home, too! But, really it wouldn’t be as good a story of how I struggled to get where I am today if I had made it home without something happening along the way. So, I was just outside Dallas when I lost my credit card; that credit card was like my lifeblood. I figured I needed just about nine dollars’ worth of gas to make it all the way home. Now, being the charismatic Texan I am, I flashed my million-dollar smile—I guess it was actually only worth nine dollars at the time—and I convinced the station attendant to let me pump gas in exchange for what I needed to get home. I told him I would pay him back someday and I meant it. He probably thought I was full of shit, but he gave me what I needed and I was on my way.

I can’t explain it, but from the first day I stepped into a wrestling ring, I knew that one day I was going to be a big superstar. I knew that one day I
would be the NWA World Heavyweight Champion like my hero, Lou Thesz. Call it ego or cockiness or whatever you want, but I just knew that I was destined to make more than eight dollars a match.

Like I said earlier, I made enough money to buy Miami but pissed it all away. Well, you can’t buy Miami at eight dollars a match, you know? But you don’t start at the top, either. You pay your dues and work your way up through the system, whatever system there is; something guys in the business today don’t really understand, don’t have a clue.

Anyway, the day I became the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, when I put that belt on, it was like, oh man … it was real. It was real to me! It was real to me, because all the other guys knew they could not get that belt, politically or whatever the reason … and when I put it around my waist, man, it was like you can’t even imagine how it felt. It was a rush … and I thought back to the first day I saw Lou Thesz, because growing up he was unbelievable as a champion.

So I was just a kid hanging over the side railing with an autograph book and I watched Lou walk in the back door of the city auditorium. Now, as a kid, the auditorium looked huge—and you see those buildings now, and they all look like little pieces of shit—but as a kid you see the auditorium as the Astrodome—and when he came in the door and he had this really fine suitcase … not like the gym bags they use today … how you compared yourself in the business back then was if you had a Haliburton briefcase, then you made it with the big guys. You can imagine back then how you got to work your way up the card and all … that’s the way the people in the business looked at it.