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.
