[WideRight05]

Vince HATED Dusty when he came in for his father. It was Jr.'s idea to use the popular NWA wrestler to get Superstar Billy Graham "OVER" to WWWF fans. However, as soon as they put a mic in Dusty's face, he became the most loved star, even surpassing Bruno. It killed Jr., and forced the WWWF to allow Dusty to have evenly booked matches with Graham. Dusty maintained his following and never gave the WWWF a chance to do anything further with him when he took off for NWA again with the promise to win the title from Harley Race.

When Dusty came back, Jr. was running WWF and Vince wanted "pay back", so, he put Dusty in polka dots. Well, Dusty knew he was being taken advantage of again, and as soon as he got that chance to get on the mic, he turned that gimmick into one of the most popular characters of the time for WWF.

You are right LWC, Dusty would not survive in WWE today because Vince learned his lesson and would never allow Dusty to talk.

I agree. I don't know the full details, but I always felt like Vince tried to ruin dusty when he had that whole polka dot thing. It ended up backfiring. Watching some of Dusty's youtube videos from WWF, he got a HUGE pop when he came out. Him and Sapphire (RIP) were two of the fan favorites in WWF at the time. And Ironically, don't know if this has anything to do with it, but if you listen to Dusty's WWF theme song and Hulk Hogan's WCW theme song, you'll see that they are very similar in the beginning...in how they start...so Hulk ended up using that for WCW. It all backfired on Vince.

I also agree that Vince hasn't liked big guys. I'm surprised Mark Henry, for one, turned out as well as he did. I used to think he was a joke back in the attitude era with his "sexual chocolate" gimmick. Now his character is the complete opposite of what he was lol. He has turned out well.

Vince is real bad with taking his personal feelings against his wrestlers out on their characters and hurting their success. It didn't hurt Dusty Rhodes, it actually ended up backfiring....now if we could just get a great wrestler or two today that are like Dusty Rhodes....