Dustin Rhodes looks back on one of his most famous character incarnations, Goldust.
The Natural spoke about his portrayal of The Bizarre One during a recent interview with the Wrestling Perspective Podcast, where he recalled when the character finally clicked for him.
It happened in Madison Square Garden, and it happened in 1996, I think. I was wrestling Savio Vega, and we’ve been making house show loops for weeks or months. I am getting my bearings trying to figure out the heel work, the character, and stuff like that. Every night he would want me to do certain things, and I would say no, I can’t, I can’t do that because I was scared to cross the line. This is back when Vince [McMahon] used to go to the house shows and be a fan at the curtains. He watched the shows to see who was getting reactions from the crowd and things like that. I was like, oh God, and we’re in the Garden. I mean, this is Puerto Rico; he’s Puerto Rican. The Puerto Rican population in New York is very high, and in 1996 it was crazy.
Dustin says he finally got brave and decided to take a chance in his matchup against Vega.
It was as simple as, okay, I’m going to do this tonight. I go out there, and I’m scared to death. We get to the point of the match where I’m going to do this, basically going behind him and rubbing up and down his chest. He turns around, he charges me, and I bail out of the ring, that simple. The rubbing up of the chest part is what really pissed off the fans.
As soon as Dustin heard the reactions from the crowd he knew he had tapped into something special. This gave him the confidence to continue trying new things with the Goldust character.
As soon as I heard that response from the New York crowd, they’re ruthless, it was like, holy shit. I just tapped into something. I thought I couldn’t do it, and I stepped over the line, and it worked. I’m just looking, and they’re yelling every kind of obscene thing to me that’s possible. They’re throwing stuff, they had to make an announcement to stop, or you’ll be ejected. They’re still throwing shit, and I’m dodging [things]; I roll back in the ring, and Savio was in the corner, just laughing, and I’m like, what the fuck are you laughing at? We locked back up, and I said, what are you laughing at? He said, see how easy that was. Now, watch. I’m going to make you do one more thing. I pushed him back to the corner, and he said, turn around and rub your ass in my crotch area. So, I did it right. I turned around and made these facial expressions. These weird-ass facial expressions, and he charged at me again, and I rode out again. The rest was history from that point on in. Goldust became Goldust, and I found the character that night, and it was freaking cool. I had a nice run for a while.
Goldust remains an iconic character in the history of WWE. He is a former multi-time tag champion, and a former Intercontinental Champion. He was given his WWE release in 2019 and debuted for AEW at their inaugural Double or Nothing event that same year.
Dustin will be teaming with Keith Lee on this Friday’s AEW Rampage.
