Virgil Runnels III

Virgil Runnels III (born April 11, 1966 in Austin, Texas; often called Dustin Runnels) is an American professional wrestler who has competed in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He is probably best-known for his WWE character Goldust, a sexually ambiguous movie star. He has also wrestled as Dustin Rhodes in WWE, WCW, and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA). He is the son of Dusty Rhodes, one of the best-known wrestlers of the 1970s and 1980s.

Career

Early career

Virgil "Dustin" Runnels III was the co-captain of the East Mecklenburg High School Charlotte, NC varsity wrestling team in the 1987-88 school year. He also played varsity football during that same time.

Runnels started wrestling as Dustin Rhodes in 1988 in Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW). He debuted in the National Wrestling Alliance's Jim Crockett Promotions in late 1988. During this run he formed a tag team with Kendall Windham called the "Texas Broncos." They feuded briefly with Al Perez and Larry Zbyszko.

In March 1989, Dustin was back in FCW. He teamed with Mike Graham and feuded with Black Bart. He also feuded with Kendall Windham over the FCW Title.

In July 1989, he went to the CWA, where he continued to feud with Bart. He left for the WWF in January 1990. He continued to feud with Bart on the undercard and eventually teamed with his father, Dusty Rhodes, in his feud with Ted DiBiase and Virgil.

World Championship Wrestling

In February 1991, Runnels went to World Championship Wrestling, where he feuded with Larry Zbysko at the mid-card level. In April, Alexandra York offered him to join her heel York Foundation stable, but he turned her down. This started a feud with Foundation member Terrence Taylor that lasted several months. York, in reality, was Runnels his first wife, Terri.

In late 1991, he feuded with Television Champion "Stunning" Steve Austin over the title before forming a tag team with real life best friend Barry Windham. When Windham was injured by Arn Anderson and Larry Zbysko, "The Enforcers", Dustin recruited a new partner, Ricky Steamboat, with whom he won the tag team titles. For the next seven months (through June 1992), he feuded with Paul E. Dangerously's Dangerous Alliance of Anderson, Zbysko, Austin, Rick Rude and Bobby Eaton. He was in "War Games" against the Dangerous Alliance with Steamboat, Windham, Sting and Nikita Koloff as his partners.

October 1992 saw him reform his team with Windham to again win the Tag Team Titles. In November, Windham turned on him and started a brief feud.

In January 1993, he won the United States Title and also began a feud with Rick Rude that would run through August. In October, he started feuding with Paul Orndorff and Steve Austin over the title, eventually losing it to Austin in December.

He became involved in a feud with Bunkhouse Buck and Col. Rob Parker in March of 1994. Parker eventually brought in Terry Funk and Arn Anderson to feud with Dustin. Dustin brought in his father, Dusty, who had a previous long lasting feud with Funk, to help him. This feud lasted until December when Parker brought in The Blacktop Bully to feud with Dustin. Dustin and the Bully were both fired in March 1995 when they both "bladed" (cut themselves) during the King of the Road Match at the Uncensored PPV after they were told not to.

World Wrestling Federation

In July 1995, Runnels made his debut in the WWF as Goldust. He would wear a gold colored jumpsuit and face paint along with a platinum blonde wig (over his short platinum blonde hair) and play "mind games" with opponents. The major thing he did was to make opponents think he was homosexual, usually by blowing them kisses or otherwise acting flirty. At the same time a major rift had grown between him and his father, supposedly over his marriage to Terri.

Goldust started a feud with Razor Ramon, where through late 1995 he would appear to be stalking Razor and sending him lewd messages. The feud culminated at the Royal Rumble in January 1996, where Goldust won the Intercontinental Title from Razor. Goldust surprised everybody by bringing his real life wife, Terri, in as his valet Marlena. Her gimmick was to act as a director, including sitting in a director's chair and giving him advice through his matches while smoking cigars.

Goldust and Razor Ramon were originally scheduled to have a rematch at WrestleMania XII, but these plans were dashed when Ramon was suspended by the WWF. Goldust then engaged in a feud with replacement opponent "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, which ended in a "Hollywood Backlot Brawl" at WrestleMania. Goldust lost the match, but not his Intercontinental Championship.

His time as champion included feuds with Savio Vega, The Ultimate Warrior and Ahmed Johnson, who finally won the title from Runnels.

In August 1996, he briefly had mind control over Mankind and feuded with The Undertaker. His attention soon turned to Marc Mero and his wife Sable. Goldust and Marlena attempted to get Sable to join their team but Mero won the feud and kept her by his side.

In May 1997, Goldust revealed his identity as Dustin Runnels, son of Dusty Rhodes. He started painting his face half as Goldust, and left the other side as Dustin and began a feud with Brian Pillman which saw Pillman win the services of Marlena for 30 days. When Pillman died in October, Marlena came back to Dustin. In November, Dustin dumped Marlena and got a new valet, Luna Vachon. He started dressing up as different people, (Shaftdust etc.). He feuded with Mero and Sable againm this time with Luna by his side.

In May 1998, he split with Luna and burned his Goldust suit on TV and feuded with Val Venis who claimed to had impregnated Terri. Later that year he began acting like a pracher and would cut promos about "His return" (the "he" in this case being Goldust. In October Goldust redebuted and feuded with Jeff Jarrett over the attentions of his valet Debra. Early 1999 also saw him feud with Al Snow briefly after stealing Head, The Blue Meanie who had recently renamed himself "Bluedust" and adopeted many of Goldusts mannerisms. After defeating Bluedust at the St. Valentines Day Massacre pay-per-view the Goldust would relent and accept Bluedust as a sort of apprentice. He would also bring in Ryan Shamrock and thetwo would begin to fight for Goldusts attention. During this time he would win the Intercontinental Title from The Road Dogg and lose it two weeks later. During this period, mysterious taped vingettes appeared on Raw, supposedly from hidden cameras, showing wrestlers backstage flirting with valets, gossiping about other wrestlers, and other actions the victims certainly didn't want seeing the light of day. Originally named GDTV (standing for Goldust Television), it was re-named GTV when Runnels requested and was granted a release from his WWF contract. Had the angle played out as planned, it would have been revealed that Goldust was the "G/GD" in "GTV/GDTV", secretly filming people supposedly being another part of his mania. If the WWF kept the GTV angle running for quite some time after relasing Runnels, ultimately, however the person behind it was never revealed. Even had Runnels stayed with the company it is doubtful that Goldust would have ever been revealed as the man behind GTV as the USA Network was very cautious about the gimmick because it "was a bit too controversial for them" ^*. Update: In an interview with Vince Russo (former WWF writer) conducted with WrestleCrap Radio, it was revealed that the man behind GTV would have been Tom Green.

Back to WCW

When Runnels left WWF he took some time off, patched up his differences with his father (the two had not spoken for years) and rejoined WCW, starring in several vignettes (in August 1999) as a strange, white face painted dream villain, Seven. When he actually debuted in the ring, he took the Seven suit off and cut a promo on stupid gimmicks. He became Dustin Rhodes again and feuded with Jeff Jarrett. During this time he referred to himself as "The American Nightmare", a play on his father's "American Dream" nickname.

He feuded with Terry Funk in early 2000 after turning on him and was given time off due to differences with Vince Russo. He had gotten himself into trouble with Russo while appearing on the Internet radio program, WCW Live! when he made many disparaging remarks towards the WCW Creative team and Russo in particular, calling him a "sawed-off midget" and an "asshole". He came back in February 2001 to help his dad feud with Ric Flair and Jeff Jarrett. When Vince McMahon bought WCW a month later, he did not acquire Dustin's contract.

In July 2001, he went to work for his father's new promotion, Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling.

World Wrestling Entertainment

In January 2002, he returned as a heel again to the WWF as Goldust and won the Hardcore Title several times. He formed an unlikely team with Booker T and did comic backstage vignettes. One of these comedy scenes was "Booker T and Goldust at the Movies" where they reviewed The Scorpion King, starring The Rock (since Goldust was wearing a black wig, it is speculated that he was mocking Kelly Hu's character Cassandra). The duo was also involved in a vignette involving the WWE's current promotion with 7-Eleven with Goldust humorously quoting the chain's food staples to bother Booker T ("If you give me a lick of your Slurpee, I'll let you have a bite of my wiener.") The team turned out to be surprisingly popular amongst fans and helped propel both men during that time. Goldust pleaded to join the reformed nWo in July after Booker joined, even appearing painted up in the black and white nWo colors at one appearance, but they didn't want him. He rejoined Booker when Booker was kicked out of the nWo. During that time they both turned face. He had several feuds with other wrestlers while Booker was his partner after this. Among them were Lance Storm & Christian, Christian & Chris Jericho and Lance Storm & William Regal. In January 2003, he split with Booker and was largely taken off TV. It was during this period that a new gimmick for Goldust was introduced; he was jumped backstage by Evolution members Randy Orton and Batista in a worked assault, and accidentally hurled into an electrical junction box. The resulting shock gave Goldust a form of tourettism, causing him to stutter and yell random insults at people, and also preventing him from censoring himself; one memorable example had Goldust asking Eric Bischoff, "Eric, why are you such a Dic... Dic... Dic... Dictator, Dictator?" He then formed a tag team with Lance Storm, whom he tried to teach to be a more fun person, with humorous results. He continued to make occasional appearances until his contract ran out at midnight on December 31 2003.

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling

Runnels went to Japan to work for Zero One as Dusty Rhodes Jr. (he had been billed as such in All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1990), but quickly left. He also worked a few independent dates under the name of Lonestar. He debuted in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), under the name Dustin Rhodes, along with his father, Dusty Rhodes, who was TNA's "Director of Authority". He feuded with Raven, Jason Roberts, and Bobby Roode during his time there. His only real victory came agianst former WWE superstar John Chiffer in a tables match.

On April 24, 2005, Runnels was arrested and detained by Orange County, Florida authorities following a domestic dispute with his girlfriend (he and Terri had divorced in 1999) at a hotel. He was later bonded and subsequently released, but the negative publicity generated by the incident, coupled with his father's subsequent (unrelated) departure from TNA, seemed to spell an end to his time with the promotion.

Return to WWE

On October 31 2005, Runnels donned the Goldust costume again and made a shocking return to WWE on RAW, along with Vader as a heel. Initially he was supposed to protect Jonathan Coachman from the likes of Steve Austin, but instead it was Batista he had to deal with. Despite Vader and Goldust's assistance, Batista defeated Coachman at Taboo Tuesday.

Goldust returned to the WWE again during the 2006 Royal Rumble as a surprise entrant at number 29 on January 29, 2006. He was eliminated shortly after by Rob Van Dam but Goldust would go on to return to the RAW roster.

Goldust would soon find himself on RAW's sister-show HEAT and after finding little success in the singles division, he was soon paired up with Snitsky as an "odd ball" tag team often known as "The Freaks"; in reference to the perverted Goldust and the toe sucking Snitsky. The team would come to an sudden end after Runnels was released from WWE due to missing a scheduled WWE appearance to deal with a personal court case between Runnels and his ex-wife without first informing WWE officials.

Wrestling facts

Previous managers

Nicknames

The American Nightmare
The Bizarre One
Lonestar
The Natural
The Prince of Perversion
The Prince of Perv
The Artist Formally Known as 'Gold Dust'

Finishing and signature moves

Curtain Call (Suplex slam, lifting inverted DDT, or shoulder neckbreaker)
Shattered Dreams /The Golden Globes (Cornered running kick to opponent's groin)
Shock Treatment / Lonestar State of Mind (Powerslam pin)
Oscar (Mat slam)
Bulldog
Inverted atomic drop
Butt Butt (Hip attack)
Bronco buster with pelvic thrusts
Catapult backbreaker
Neckbreaker (AKA The Director's Cut)

Championships and accomplishments

World Wrestling Entertainment

3-time WWF Intercontinental Champion
1-time WWE World Tag-Team Champion (with Booker T)
9-time WWF Hardcore Champion
- World Championship Wrestling

2-time WCW United States Heavyweight Champion
2-time WCW World Tag Team Champion (once with Barry Windham, once with Ricky Steamboat)
1-time WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Champion (with Big Josh and Tom Zenk)
- National Wrestling Alliance

1-time NWA World Tag Team Champion (with Barry Windham)
- Florida Championship Wrestling

1-time FCW Heavyweight Champion
1-time FCW Tag Team Champion (with Mike Graham)
- Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling

1-time TCW Heavyweight Champion
- American Combat Wrestling

1-time ACW Heavyweight Champion
- Pro Wrestling Illustrated

PWI ranked him # 126 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the "PWI Years" in 2003. He was also ranked # 87 of the best tag teams of the "PWI Years" with Barry Windham.
Runnels won the 1991 PWI Most Improved Wrestler of the Year Award as Dustin Rhodes.
- Wrestling Observer Newsletter