Dusty Rhodes

One night in 1974, I made the comment, 'Here I am, this fat kid, the son of a plumber. I don't look like a body builder; fist fight in a parking lot, it doesn't matter. I'm getting ready to sell out this building. I'm going to sell out Madison Square Garden one day. This is the American Dream. I'm living it.' ”

The business is my life, the ring my salvation, the locker room and roads my nourishment. ”

One of the regrettable things in my life is that my dad was not around to see my stardom, to see me wrestle or to see what I achieved by the dream I had at an early age, influenced by where he would like to go. ”

I've wined and dined with kings and queens, and I've slept in the alley eating pork and beans. ”

Dick Murdoch is a true Hall of Famer. ”

I wasn't always Rhodes, but I was always Dusty. I was never called Virgil - not by my family, not by my friends. Even my teachers at school didn't call me Virgil. ”

At the time when I started, coming out of football, I always used a forearm or an elbow. When it became Bionic is when I said it was Bionic. I went to some secret doctor in Istanbul who put some Bionic stuff in there. ”

My mom was from Germantown and was of German descent. She was a real force behind me and my dream. She was always my biggest fan, even when I was wrestling at an early age. ”

Terry Funk. Any time I got to wrestle with him, it was cool. Superstar Billy Graham was another one. ”

You pay your dues and work your way up through the system, whatever system there is - something guys in the business today don't really understand, don't have a clue. ”