Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream (14 page)

“The donkey kicked me in the chest and knocked me down, almost knocking me out. And then the guy that owned the place comes out and starts shooting a shotgun. We started running away, and as we’re going through the fence, Dusty catches his balls on the fence again; the look on his face was funny as hell.”

—B
LACK
J
ACK
M
ULLIGAN

As funny as that was, it was really tame compared to some of the other shit that happened out there. One of the wildest stories out there involved Dick Slater, Louie Tillet, Paul LeDuc, Jos LeDuc, and me.

This one night Slater was driving in my car and the other guys were following us in another car; it was pretty normal in the business for one car
to follow another from town to town. Anyway, we were far enough in front of them that we pulled over to the side of the road and I took a small can of gasoline and poured it in a line right across the two-lane highway. We had our lights off and when they got close enough, I lit the gasoline and woosh … up went the flames right across the highway.

Well, their car swerved, doing donuts and shit, going right past us and finally coming to a stop, dust flying up in the air, dirt being kicked everywhere. Well, like in the old west, we came driving up to the car real slowly alongside them and we were just laughing so fucking hard … Jos LeDuc jumped out of their car and he was so fucking scared and shaking so bad that he almost looked like a pale white … anyway I had the window down and had a wine bottle in my lap. Well, you know how things happen by instinct? There were no bad intentions or anything, but he just reached inside my window and slapped me in the face. It was like we were getting ready to fight. We were laughing and he slapped me in the face. So I took the wine bottle and I hit him right across the forehead with the fucking thing. When it hit him, he staggered to the front of the car and he was so mad, he jumped on the fucking hood.

When he jumped on the hood, Slater took off, as in he hit the gas! So now we were driving down the fucking road … we were going about 30 miles an hour … and the “Canadian Freight Train,” Jos LeDuc, one of the strongest son of a bitches anywhere, was on the hood of our car looking right in at us. He had his hands where the hood comes up to meet the windshield and he had a death grip on it. Pretty soon though, Slater was going 60 … he was going 70 … we were going 70 fucking miles an hour with Jos LeDuc on the hood of the car looking in at us and his lips were now pressing against the windshield like one of those stick-on “Garfield” dolls and his eyes looked like a fish … he was all puckered up.

We were laughing so fucking hard we finally came to a stop and when we did he rolled off the hood and into a ditch. Now here came the other car in behind us and Paul LeDuc and Tillet jumped out and ran over to Jos to pick him up, and by the time they got him up, man, he started laughing so hard, realizing what we all just did. But it was the funniest thing to see big Jos LeDuc on the hood like that.

Highway 60 was notorious for shit like that. We always had our guns with us, and if we saw a guy who was taking a piss on the side of the car when coming back from a trip, we would come by and shoot the gun in the air …
boom, boom, boom … to scare the shit out of them so they’d piss all over themselves. Well, this one time we came along and Banny had a bunch of the guys pulled off there, down by the ranch road. They were all naked and were going to moon us. Well I came back holding my gun out the window like I was gonna shoot and Banny was holding a beer bottle and daring me to fire. …

“… and I said go ahead and see if you can shoot the fucking bottle from my hand. Well, Dusty points the gun and pulls the trigger and shoots into the air, but all the other guys hear the shot and take off into the field thinking he’s really shooting at us.”

—M
IKE
G
RAHAM

Through the years the posse has changed quite a bit. The original posse was Murdoch and me, which was more of a pussy posse if you catch what I’m saying. There were also some people who wanted to be in the posse or thought they were in the posse, like “Beezer” Brian Blair and Steve Keirn, but they really weren’t. Even Flair to a degree wanted to be in the original posse with me and Hoyt.

Back when Ric first started and weighed about 300 pounds, he was driving down the road with me, driving my car as I gave him a ride to the next town. He looked over at me and said, “I want to ask you a question … a big favor of you … I got my wrestling name, and if it’s okay with you I want to be a cousin. I want to be ‘Rambling’ Ricky Rhodes.”

I said to him, “No! Make your own name. Be your own self. Make something of yourself in your own likeness of what you see … not ‘Rambling’ Ricky Rhodes.”

Could you imagine if Flair would have been “Rambling” Ricky Rhodes all these fucking years … Jesus Christ!

Thinking back, I don’t know when I had more fun than when I was on the road and hanging with my boys.

“In Tampa, there’s a big bar called the Dallas Bull and in the early ‘80s when the movie Urban Cowboy came out, they were going to put these mechanical bulls in the place. Well, one night Dusty convinced the owner to let the wrestlers ride that thing before anybody else did. It was outside in the back of the place and these fucking things were still wrapped in the plastic they came shipped in. None of the boys were successful riding that thing; it threw everybody off and into the dirt.”

—S
IR
O
LIVER
H
UMPERDINK

Sometimes memorable shit just happened without the posse being around or even involved, like this one time down in Key West. After one of the shows, all the boys went downtown with half the guys ending up in Captain Tony’s and the other half ending up in Sloppy Joe’s. All the babyfaces hung together and all the heels hung together. Well at one point in the evening we all came face to face right in front of Sloppy Joe’s. All the boys were right there, and so I drew a line with my foot on Duval Street and dared the heels to cross it. As somebody put it, we were way past sobriety at that point, and for about 30 minutes we had a Mexican standoff right in the middle of town. All sorts of people were in the street to see if this big-ass brawl would break out. Back then, that was great publicity for us. Think of how many people went home and told their family and friends, “You ain’t gonna believe the shit I saw on Duval Street last night.” Man, shit like that just doesn’t happen anymore, and if it did, nobody would believe it.

Sometimes, however, it’s not all fun and crazy shit when it comes to the posse or the business in general. Sometimes it’s harsh reality; the kind that feels like a bull just gored you in the pit of your stomach. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to endure in the business is when Magnum had his auto accident. To see that happen to my brother was … gut wrenching.

The call came in the morning. It was from his wife and she was crying. I dressed and headed to the hospital. As I arrived, I found that the world of Jim Crockett Promotions, the NWA and pro wrestling would be changed forever. The Golden Boy … the heir to the throne … had been paralyzed in an auto accident.

Terry and I were very close. He became a member of the posse when I took him under my wing, because here was a kid who had it all from the good looks to the ability to that natural charisma, the one thing you can’t teach. He had been fucked by Buzz Sawyer, hard, and breaking into the business cost his family something like $60,000. Financially, it almost broke his family.

Florida Championship Wrestling is where he really learned his skills and was where he’d begin to claim his piece of wrestling history. Then he went to go to work for Bill Watts and the UWF in Oklahoma, the old Mid-South
promotion. That’s where he became a star, but they knew it was my job to make him a bigger star. We at JCP were getting ready to get on an unbelievable roll and he was to be the centerpiece.

But in the blink of an eye all that shit didn’t matter, because it all came crashing down. Plans had to change literally overnight because business was still business, but it ate me inside to see a young lion like Magnum in that condition.

“Dusty pushed me harder than I’d ever been pushed before. We watched the thing grow from 2,000 and 3,000 people a night in small towns to 10,000 people jamming those same arenas … we were on a rocket ride. We went from flying on commercial airlines to flying on private jets… it was right there on the teeter-totter edge just before pay-per-views. The week of Starrcarde 1985 I made the most money I had ever made in a week—$13,000. My future was just getting ready to take off. But that all changed on October 14, 1986, when I had the accident. They took care of me while I was in the hospital and I made about $185,000 that year. I probably would have made $225,000 if I hadn’t been injured. Who knows how much I would have made with pay-per-views. I watched the landscape of wrestling change from a hospital bed.”

—”M
AGNUM
T.A.” T
ERRY
A
LLEN

I remember standing with the doctor, his wife, and his mom and dad when the doctors told him he would have a million-to-one chance to ever move from the head down—Fuck it I thought. … Fuck it! His story of strength and will is a book in and of itself. Magnum walked out of that hospital and is walking today.

Shit happens, they say, but some of it is shittier than others.

“When Magnum got hurt and we used to go visit him, I thought it was great Dusty stood by the guy like that. Dusty told him, ‘You’ll always have a place with us’ when Magnum was worried about how he was going to pay his bills and make ends meet.”

—D
AVID
A
LLAN
C
OE

These days the posse consists more of refined and established businessmen than wild outlaws and wrestling people, although there will always be people in the business as part of my gang.

A couple of the new generation posse members down in Florida include Smoothie Kane and “Big Tilly” James Tilquist. Many moons ago Tilly worked as an enhancement talent for WCW. He also worked in Florida on the independent circuit as part of a tag team called Phi Delta Slam. Two super nice guys who take care of me when I’m down in the Orlando area, but two guys who never really made it in the business and they’re okay with that which is really a cool attitude for them to have because as I said earlier, not everyone can be the star of the show.

Then there’s David Qualls. Not only is he a member of my posse, but David is one of my business partners with Turnbuckle Entertainment, Black and Blue division. David is a high-level executive in the casino resort industry as a property developer and manager. We met over the telephone when he just picked up the phone and called me one day and have been friends ever since.

“Dusty was my idol growing up because he didn’t have the body of a Greek god, but rather a Hindu one … Buddha. His euphemisms and body language were hilarious without making him into a buffoon. But the thing that most impressed me about him, was when we had a show in Miami, Oklahoma. He sat everybody down and said, ‘We’re going to give the fans a show tonight … no extreme crap.’ He told everybody to have a good time, but to give the people what they’re looking for.”

—D
AVID
Q
UALLS

Another member of my posse is Jerry “J.D.” Douthit. I’ve known J.D. for about eight years and I met him when he started coaching my daughter Teil’s softball team when she was about 14. A couple of years later he and I were assistant coaches together at the school where my son Cody played football along with his son Jeremy and we just remained friends.

When Turnbuckle was getting off the ground, he helped out with some sponsorships, but that’s not why we remained friends … it was the bond through our kids and after they finished school, we just remained friends.

“He’s a real man. You’ve got to look beyond the celebrity to see he’s a real person. I helped him when he needed it and he helped me when I needed it. When I lost my father in October 2003, Dusty was right there for me. He came by to see if I needed anything and it was quite a blessing for him to be there.”

—J.D. D
OUTHIT

And finally there’s former Georgia Senator Richard Green. Senator Green and I have been next-door neighbors for the better part of 18 years, and like J.D., he and I became friends through our children, when Teil went to his daughter Stephanie’s Halloween party many years ago. But that friendship isn’t like one of those “Can I borrow your lawnmower?” friendships. This was one of those friendships that stuck and these days the senator is my main hunting buddy, especially for deer and turkey.

“Dusty’s idea of hunting and my idea of hunting are much different. He’s a gentlemen’s hunter. I take it more seriously. This one time I shot an eight-point buck and I said to Dusty, ‘Let me get your picture with it.’ The next thing I know, Dusty put the picture up and claimed it as his own.”