You should read The Masked Man’s remembrance of Dusty Rhodes, because, obviously, it’s aces. (You should also read our own eulogy.) But all you need to know about Rhodes’s love of and commitment to his job is contained in this story told by his sons:
Dusty’s two sons followed him into wrestling, and both made it big as Dustin “Goldust” Rhodes and Cody Rhodes. In a recent interview, they said that when they were growing up, Dusty didn’t even acknowledge that wrestling was fake around the house. Cody was 12 when the Four Horsemen broke his father’s leg, and Dusty wore the cast and crutches around at home to keep up the act. He cared so much about the show that he was playing to an audience of two the same way he’d play to a sold-out Omni in Atlanta. “He doesn’t want the magic to end,” Cody said. “He loves it so much.”
That’s the American Dream.