The Artist Formerly Known As Goldust

[Trent Valentine]

Lets start at the beginning. Goldust v.s Brian Pillman fought at Ground Zero with the stipulation that Pillman gets Terri for 30 days. Sadly before it could be concluded, The Loose Cannon headed to that big ring in the sky.

And so, Good Ol JR decided to interview the happy couple..



Word has it at the time, Dustin and Terri were having real life marital problems, so Vince out of the kindness of his heart, decides to turn this into an angle. And so, Goldust kicked Terri to the curb and decided to hook up with Luna..and in turn, wore some of the most bizarre outfits ever..







This went on for a while with Dustin wearing gawdy outfits and sometimes impersonating other superstars and pop culture icons like Marilyn Manson and Shaft. This went on for a few months till Dustin one day decided to torch his Goldust costume and declare that Goldust is dead and blame Vince McMahon for all the things going wrong in his life, leading to a mini feud with Vince's pet project, Corporate Dude Love. After that, he became a Born Again Christian until Goldust returned.

Personally..I got mixed feelings about the angle. I don't know if it was good or..crap. It's like a bad accident..you can't look away. Though Vince was an asshole to use the real life problems of Terri and Dustin and turn it into an angle. What are your thoughts?

[Wii M Punk]

I remember later in 1998 Val Venis began showing videos of him bedding Terrie.

Like you say it was really asshole'ish of Vince to use their real life problems for a storyline but this was maybe the point where it went too far considering their issues outside the ring? Sometimes you just gotta do things for the business but then there's other times when you should stay well clear.

[Sumbody Gon' Get Dey Kneelift]

Oh my god. I missed this. Those outfits are...incredible. Want.

[Deleted]

Dustin is a very strange man.

[Paul]

Mar 22, 2010 11:13:28 GMT -5 Trent Valentine said:

That is one amazing mullet (?) Luna is sporting there...

[mongomcmichael]

My favorite Attitude-era Goldust moment was when he made Blue Meanie his b****.

[moonlight]

If they doubt his dedication to the WWE all they have to do is look back at this stuff. Only a COMPANY MAN would dress up like that.

[Zen411]

I am both compelled by and disgusted by those images. I think it was a very brave character but, at the time, it made me shy away from watching b/c I felt like it was going too far.

A lot of Goldust's character was derived from Adrian Street. I think this development and association with Luna was a further step down the Exotic Adrian Street path. Street was known for outlandish costumes and Miss Linda was more like Luna than Terri/Marlena.

I sort of wish Goldust would experiment more with shocking people nowadays. The Gold suit and blond wig is pretty bland nowadays. I do wonder if Dustin Rhodes could get a nice little run minus the face paint and gimmicks. It didnt work in the attitude era but would it work in an era where more guys are more of a natural character?

[Futureraven: Beelzebruv]

The problem was really it just kind of meandered along not doing anything, especially towards the end, we had extreme Goldust who did pretty much nothing, then he turned into Dustin, and soon after was literally doing nothing, walking around arenas with signs, then was Goldust again with little explanaition.

When Mankind turned into Cactus Jack in 2000, it was a big deal, this was a bad situation only the baddest man could deal with, thenDustin turned back into Goldust, it was pretty much 'oh, by the way he's Goldust again.'

[Cactus Jack]

I loved it. Was a nice change for the Goldust character, and I marked for his transformation back too. Top-notch.

[rnrk supports BLM]

The whole angle was pretty much indicative of how WWF managed to screw up the Goldust character.

Goldust was calculating, Goldust was intelligent, Goldust played mind games. Did he have perverse fetishs? Certainly, but he was also clearly using them to unnerve and gain an edge over his opponents. Goldust was weird and creepy, and he was using his weirdness and creepiness to win his matches.

But somewhere along the way, as the Attitude Era and the shock TV nonsense got into full swing, the bookers forgot about the psychology behind Goldust and figured that since he gets reactions for doing bizarre, perverse crap, why not just crank the bizarreness and perversion up a few more notches?

Goldust calling himself the Artist Formerly Known as Goldust and wearing even more grotesque fetish outfits wasn't the problem; the problem was he wasn't doing this to his advantage. He was just doing weird crap for the sake of weird crap, and more often than not it resulted in him getting beat up more because he was too wrapped up in his showmanship to focus on beating his opponents.

And that's the downward spiral that's lead us to the point where one of the most talented, unique wrestlers currently employed by WWE has spent the last decade mainly as a comedy jobber.

[agent817]

I wasn't really watching during that time, and by the time I started watching, Goldust phased out and he was just Dustin Runnels who happened to wear his FU shirt in his matches or various muscle shirts with jeans. However, I read about the character and saw lots of images of that version of the character was like "What the hell?!". The parody of his father, at least the WWF version, was priceless. But a lot of the outfits he wore were extremely bizarre and disturbing. I remember watching Wrestlemania XIV for the first time when I was 12 and was disturbed by his Sable getup in the video package for the Mero/Sable vs Goldust/Luna match.

Also, on the part of Dustin and Terri's marital problems being used as an angle. This predated the Edge/Lita thing of 2005 by 6 or 7 years. Now that I think about it, there are a bit of some similarities. Matt feuding with Kane was like Goldust feuding with Pillman. I don't know if internet smarks existed in the 90s, but I do know that when Lita turned on Kane, most people knew about the Matt Hardy issue and then later on, he returned and feuded with Edge. I thought that it was a cringeworthy angle, hell, the deal with Terri and Dustin's marital problems being made into an angle was cringeworthy. Apart from changing Goldust's character a bit, then came Val Venis sleeping with Terri and all that other stuff.

By the way, I wonder what the bookers had in store for Goldust and Marlena had Pillman lived. Do you think that the match with Dude Love and Brian Pillman with Goldust cuffed to the ringpost would've been the blowoff to the Pillman/Goldust feud? Who knows what could've happened if Pillman didn't die.

[Throwback]

Mar 22, 2010 13:40:41 GMT -5 Paul said:

Mar 22, 2010 11:13:28 GMT -5 Trent Valentine said:

That is one amazing mullet (?) Luna is sporting there...

It was more of a REALLY long mohawk.

[Evilution E5150]

arent we forgetting the awesomeness that was "Dusty" Dust

[Randy Barber 4-Life]

Mar 22, 2010 11:13:28 GMT -5 Trent Valentine said:

It's like a bad accident..you can't look away.

Personally, I did look away. If I'm not mistaken this stuff was the straw that broke the camel's back with me and had me watching no or almost no WWF television for a long time.

There was a lot of other stuff going on at the time that I didn't like, so it's not like this in and of itself was bad enough to drive me away. But it was really just the last straw for a while.

[Throwback]

Mar 22, 2010 22:30:07 GMT -5 Evilution E5150 said:

arent we forgetting the awesomeness that was "Dusty" Dust

It's honestly the first the that comes to mind when I hear AFKAG

["Dashing" Dr.VonPhoenix]

I was torn. I was possibly the BIGGEST Goldust mark on Earth when he debuted and simply did not want to see the character tweaked or altered in any fashion. However, this shit was crazy. As much as I didn't want to, I couldn't help but love it. It was all kinds of freakish. So, I liked TAFKAG, but missed the old movie obsessed, offensively flirtatious, homoerotic Goldust even more. It wasn't really a fair trade off.

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

Mar 22, 2010 22:09:43 GMT -5 agent817 said:

By the way, I wonder what the bookers had in store for Goldust and Marlena had Pillman lived. Do you think that the match with Dude Love and Brian Pillman with Goldust cuffed to the ringpost would've been the blowoff to the Pillman/Goldust feud? Who knows what could've happened if Pillman didn't die.

More than likely, Goldust and Luna were likely taking a role that was meant for Pillman and Terri. Perhaps if Pillman lived, we may have seen a face TAFKA Goldust and Luna vs. heel Pillman and Terri, with the Marc Mero and Sable breakup occurring in a different fashion; perhaps an extended program with Tom Brandi. Bear in mind that Pillman was already making Terri doing some bizarre things that were further alluded to in the XXX Files segments. With that in mind, Goldust does the Forever Unchained stuff (carrying a different meaning) and brings in Luna and goes into the outlandish stuff as a means of topping Pillman. Of course, we will never quite know the answer.

[toonami4life]

This was one of the things that turned me off from the Attitude Era. I thought it was dumb and is basically why I spent most of 98-99 watching WCW instead of WWF with all the bizarre stuff they had going on.

[johnnyk9]

yeah I remember the night after Bad Blood before Pillman died it was announced that Goldust and Marlena were going to renew their wedding vows with the cermony ending tragicly with Terrie stating she was leaving Dustin for Pillman