Hard Times

Wrestling, when you’re a kid, is all muscles and mayhem. It’s dropkicks and body slams and bad guys who laugh too hard. But every once in a while—if you’re lucky, if you’re listening—it breaks through the pageantry and speaks in a voice that sounds an awful lot like your own.

For me, that voice came from Dusty Rhodes.

It was 1985, and I was maybe eight, maybe nine. I was the son of a sheet metal worker with calloused hands and a Marlboro cough, a man who could fix anything but couldn’t seem to fix the hole that kept widening between him and the world. My dad drank; enough that you noticed the change in the room when he opened a beer. Enough that I started noticing silence more than sound.

He was a stoic vet who didn’t talk much about work or anything else, but when he did, it was always the same story: someone younger, someone cheaper, someone faster. Laid off. Replaced. Shrugged out the door like he never mattered. He wore his dignity like a second skin, even as it thinned.

And then one night, we were sitting in our faded blue recliners, the ones that still smelled faintly of sweat and sawdust, watching wrestling. NWA. Jim Crockett Promotions. Not the neon circus up north - real wrestling. Blood, grit, and Southern-fried truth.

That’s when Dusty came on the screen.

He was wide like a working man, not a sculpted superhero. He looked into that camera like he was staring down every boss who ever shorted a paycheck. And he said:

“First of all, I’d like to thank the many, many fans throughout this country that wrote cards and letters to Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, while I was down.
Second, I want to thank Jim Crockett Promotions for waitin’ and takin’ the time, because I know how important it was—‘Hard Times’—for Dusty Rhodes to return.
And, Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, with that weight, got what I wanted… Ric Flair, the World’s Heavyweight Champion…”

But it wasn’t just about Flair.

It was about us.

“Hard times are when the textile workers around this country are outta work, they got four or five kids and can’t pay their wages, can’t buy their food.
Hard times are when the auto workers are outta work and they tell ‘em, ‘Go home!’
And hard times are when a man’s worked at a job thirty years—thirty years—and they give him a watch, kick him in the butt, and say, ‘Hey, a computer took your place, daddy.’ That’s hard times!”

My father didn’t say anything.

But I looked over, and he wasn’t blinking.

Dusty wasn’t just cutting a promo. He was preaching. He was standing in front of a camera, under hot lights, speaking with the cadence of someone who knew what it meant to carry your family on your back and still come home with not enough. His voice cracked not because it was weak, but because it was weighted. Full of names he’d never know, lives he’d never live—but felt in his bones anyway.

That night, I watched my dad nod along to every word. It was the first time I saw him agree with someone on TV. The first time wrestling made him feel seen, not just distracted.

And it was the first time I realized that wrestling wasn’t all theater.

Sometimes, it was therapy.

Dusty Rhodes didn’t have Ric Flair’s suits or limousine lifestyle. He didn’t speak with polish. He spoke with gravel. With hurt. With history. He was every factory foreman who got passed over, every dad who came home early because they didn’t need him anymore, every kid who watched from the hall as his father sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands.

When Dusty said, "I am the American Dream," he wasn’t bragging. He was reminding us that the dream had sweat stains and bills to pay. That it didn’t come wrapped in red, white, and blue—it came wearing steel-toed boots and a quiet kind of dignity.

He wasn’t telling us what to believe. He was telling us we weren’t alone.

That mattered.

Especially to a kid like me, in a house like mine, where hope sometimes showed up wearing wrestling boots and a lisp.

I’ve seen that promo a hundred times since. The cadence, the power, the way Dusty points his finger at the screen like he’s pointing straight at your chest. People remember Flair’s robes, Austin’s stunners, Hogan’s posing. But Dusty gave us something more rare:

He told the damn truth.

Not the political kind. Not the kind that shifts with headlines. The deep truth. The kind you inherit. The kind you live. The kind that hurts and holds you in equal measure.

And all these years later, I still hear that voice sometimes. In quiet rooms. On hard days. When work feels like a fight, or the world feels too cold.

Dusty Rhodes, the son of a plumber, the American Dream, reminds me of something simple:

That pain is universal. That pride still matters. And that hard times don’t last forever.

Todo

Death, it’s always there—looming, crawling, whispering, a presence thick like fog in the back of your mind. It’s never far off, never taking a day off. But I’m faster. I outrun it, or at least I like to think I do. I lace up my James Worthy New Balances—bright, ridiculous shoes, names that could’ve only come out of an era where names meant something—but that’s the thing. They’re the only part of me I can trust, the only part that doesn’t betray me as I tear across the canal bank, my legs pistoning in the heat. Todo. Todo. Todo. Every step, every breath, one word, one answer: a mantra, a prayer, a defiant rally against the relentless countdown that never stops.

Luis, always the prophet, always the one to speak the truth of the moment: "How much can change in an instant? His voice in my ear from June, and the answer, Everything. Life to death, a blink of an eye. I can’t say it didn’t stick with me—didn’t worm its way in like a bad song. And then, the Blue Angels come crashing into my universe, a blur of blue and white streaks, a performance of beauty and violence, like some messed-up metaphor for this thing we call life. The earth shakes, the sound’s almost a physical thing, rattling my bones as they peel away into the sky. A giant claw mark on the world’s face. The wind picks up again, hot and insistent from the south, pushing me forward like some unseen force.

And still, I run. Todo. There’s no real finish line. There’s only the chase, the sweat, the air, the ground beneath me. Death’s behind me, keeping pace, but I won’t let it have me. Not yet. Not today. I’ll outrun it for as long as I can.

The Cage Door Slammed..

I was almost six years old the night the Freebirds broke Texas, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

It was just after Christmas, 1982. Most kids were playing with new toys or sneaking extra dessert, but I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in our apartment in California, spinning the UHF dial until the signal came through—static, wavy lines, and then there it was: World Class Championship Wrestling, beaming in from some far-off place called Reunion Arena.

I didn’t know much about Texas. I didn’t know anything about regional loyalty or family dynasties or who was supposed to be the good guys. But I knew what looked cool. I knew what sounded like the music I liked. I knew who felt like they were having the most fun in the room.

And the Von Erichs, well—they were fine. They were handsome and athletic and probably great if you were from Dallas. But I wasn’t from Dallas. I was from the coast. I was rock ’n’ roll, not country. I didn’t want barefoot boys with feathered hair and football muscles.

I wanted Michael P.S. Hayes.

The first time I saw the Freebirds, it felt like someone had snuck a rock concert into the middle of a wrestling match. They wore sequins and sunglasses and attitude. They didn’t jog to the ring, they arrived. Hayes, Gordy, Roberts—they moved like they owned the world. When that entrance music hit, it felt like the whole screen was shaking.

They didn’t belong, and that’s exactly why I loved them.

So, when they showed up as friends of the Von Erichs, it felt like maybe the world was making room for something new. The country boys and the outlaws, the blue bloods and the leather jackets, Texas and Georgia and maybe even California, all getting along. It felt like possibility.

Then came Christmas.

Kerry Von Erich vs. Ric Flair in a steel cage. Title on the line. Michael Hayes as the special referee. I was buzzing before the bell even rang. The Von Erichs looked ready. Flair looked like a villain out of a cartoon. And Hayes? Hayes looked like he had a plan.

The match built like a storm. You could feel it through the screen, even on that grainy broadcast with its rolling lines and static pops. And then came the moment: Kerry had Flair right where he wanted him. Hayes opened the cage door. Told Kerry to walk out. Hand him the win.

And Kerry said no.

I remember sitting up straighter, eyes wide. This wasn’t how I thought it would go. Hayes was helping. Kerry should’ve taken it. That’s what made sense to me. But he didn’t.

So Hayes shoved him.

And then Terry Gordy—big and silent and waiting like thunder—slammed that steel door on Kerry’s head like he was closing a chapter. Like he was declaring war.

And I, six years old in California, watching through static and wonder… I cheered.

I jumped up. I laughed. I whooped like I'd seen my team win the Super Bowl.

My Dad’s girlfriend peeked in from the kitchen, confused by the noise. “Didn’t your guy just get hit in the head with a door?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “my guy slammed it.”

I didn’t see betrayal. Not then. I saw rebellion. The Von Erichs represented something I didn’t understand yet—homegrown pride, tradition, family. The Freebirds were something else entirely. They were cool. They were loud. They were what I wanted to be.

But over the next few weeks, things got harder to explain.

I watched as the Texas crowds turned, furious and hurt. I watched Kevin come out fists flying. I watched David talk about loyalty and blood. And I started to feel it—not guilt, exactly. But weight. Complexity. That strange feeling in your chest when you realize the thing you love might not be for everyone. Hell, it might not even be on the right side of history.

I didn’t stop loving the Freebirds. I couldn’t. They were my first wrestling love—the way they moved, the way they talked, the way they made everyone feel something, whether they wanted to or not. But I started to understand what they’d done.

I started to understand that sometimes, the people who look like they’re having the most fun are also the ones doing the most damage.

That was my first wrestling heartbreak. Not because my heroes lost—but because they won, and I had to figure out what that meant.

Looking back now, it all makes a kind of poetic sense. I didn’t grow up in the Sportatorium. I didn’t carry the Von Erich name in my heart. I found wrestling on my own, on a scratchy UHF station in a cluttered apartment in California. And the Freebirds—their swagger, their sound, their defiance—spoke to me.

I still pull up that match sometimes, watch it on YouTube through the grain of memory. The cage door still slams. The crowd still erupts. Kerry still falls.

And even now, all these decades later, part of me still smiles.

Because that was the night I learned wrestling, just like life, wasn’t black and white.

It was neon. It was noise. It was chaos and charisma and heartbreak all wrapped in glitter. It was Badstreet.

And I’ve been cheering ever since.