Bruce Prichard – ‘WWE Made A Mistake By Turning Dustin Rhodes Into A Normal Guy’
WWE wound up altering Dustin Rhodes’ Goldust character during the early days of Monday Night RAW. This is something Bruce Prichard now admits was a mistake.
Speaking on a recent edition of his “Something To Wrestle” podcast, the WWE executive commented on why he disagreed with the decision at the time, the contrast between Goldust and Rhodes’ ensuing work, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On why he disagreed with the decision at the time: “I didn’t like taking Goldust out of the Goldust character. I knew Dustin wanted to do this, and felt very strongly that there were real feelings and emotions about the Goldust character and Dusty. I just felt that the reason Goldust was Goldust, was because it was a persona Dustin could put on and be someone else. I think he was better at portraying a character than he was as The Natural.”
On the contrast between Goldust and Rhodes’ ensuing work: “That Goldust character was so rich, flamboyant, and all-consuming. When you take it off of him, he becomes a normal guy. He wasn’t interesting, right off the bat, in my opinion. I thought Dustin had come so far in the character work he had done, that when you stripped all that away, all of a sudden, he was a regular guy. I don’t think people paid money to see a regular guy next door.”
On why removing Goldust was a negative change: “Nobody gave a sh*t about Dustin Rhodes. They only gave a sh*t about Goldust. We stripped him of that, and everything that the audience had an emotional attachment to. It’s hard to talk about because I f**king loved Dustin Rhodes, I thought he was one of the most talented talents I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. But when you take a flamboyant character like Goldust and strip it all away, and you make someone a boring husband, I’m not watching TV, and I’m not watching WWE to see a boring husband with a kid who goes on TV and says, ‘My daddy was mean to me. We didn’t get along.’”
On how the change might have worked if both Rhodes’ were employed by WWE: “There were more people attached to Dusty Rhodes than Dustin Rhodes. That audience, the WWE fans, didn’t watch that other sh*t [WCW]. Even if they knew that Dustin was Dusty’s son, they didn’t care. And I just thought that everything interesting, everything emotional, we took away from him.”
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