Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream by Dusty Rhodes, Howard Brody

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    I always thought there was an invisible line drawn in our business that I refer to as the yellow finger. This line, if you will, divided the pre-merchandise era and the time when they started selling these big number-one foam fingers at the arenas. And who was the biggest yellow finger of them all? Hulk Hogan.
    We all set there?
    Getting back to Terry, I always looked up to him because he played football at West Texas State and so did I. He and his family ran the wrestling in town that I would go watch; kind of like how yellow finger looked up to me—although he may not admit it—when he would go to the Tampa Armory to see and learn from me before he got into the business. Later on when I was established as “The American Dream,” Terry would come to Florida and talk some shit about me quitting the team because I was behind him, but that was just part of the fun.
“I always claimed Dusty quit the football team because he was behind me as a second-string guard. That wasn’t true. He was a hell of a ballplayer … a hell of an athlete … a good linebacker. People don’t know it, but he was a tough, hard-nose, damned good athlete.”
—T ERRY F UNK
    Terry was always unorthodox. He was one of those workers who really thought he was a hooker and a shooter … like yellow finger, like Hogan. They think they’re hookers and shooters, but they have a great wall ofimagination. They just had that Dick Murdoch or Wahoo McDaniel mentality—except Wahoo could be mean—that wrestlers should be respected whether they deserved it or not.
    Terry has a respect for the business like nobody I have ever met besides myself and a few other people like Dick or Wahoo.
    To this day, at 63 years old or however old he really is, Terry believes it’s real. Walking out through that curtain when his name is called, it’s believable at that point because he does things for his love of the business that people who are younger than him shouldn’t even be doing. But that’s what he knows and that’s how we took care of business. We would feud to the point of real stitches … 12 or 14 stitches, and ribs really being broken. When he would hit you with a chair, it wasn’t like on the flat side. That son of a bitch would either throw it at you or he’d hit you with the jagged part of it. It didn’t make a fuck of a difference to him, because in the ring he was always in a barroom fight!
    I was on the stage singing at the Imperial Lounge in Tampa one night with my good friend Captain Lewis, and he crawled through the club on his hands and knees, going between people’s legs from the back door to the stage to come after me. Earlier that night we had a brutal, brutal match. Once he made it to the stage, he threw a drink in my face. I didn’t see it coming and I leaped up and we fought all the way to and out the back door. He just thought that was the greatest thing in the world, and it was funnier than shit because he believed that … and so that believability carried to the people. And that believability to this day is not carried longer by anybody besides me, the Devil—Kevin Sullivan—and probably Terry, because he’s been in it his entire life.
    As far as he and I are concerned, I believe it’s still a feud that people will pay to see; these two old gunfighters going at it.
    Some of the Texas Death Matches we had are still talked about, historic if you will. So you know the feud with him is still going on … the hatred between us is still strong. We’re not shooters, we’re not hookers, we’re just two sons of bitches who want to kick each other’s ass every time we see each other.
    Two old warriors beating the fuck out of each other at some independent show in front of hundreds of people going crazy— it doesn’t get any better than that. Buddy, there is no gray area here—this is fucking me and himkicking each other’s ass in front of hundreds of people and getting the crowd into it. That’s a great