#6 Goldust
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Younger WWE fans may not fully appreciate the legendary career that Dustin Runnels has enjoyed. Today, Goldust is very much seen as a lower-mid card talent whose presence wouldn’t be too sorely missed if he was to leave the company in the near future. This is a genuine shame given how important the son of Dusty Rhodes has been for the company over the years.
Goldust made his debut in 1996, in a time when Vince McMahon was starting to wake up to the changes happening in society at large. Wrestling was never going to survive as the child-friendly cartoonish spectacle it had been in the 1970s and 80s, and it needed to embrace edgier content that pushed the limits of US social conservatism.
A top AEW star just called one of his colleagues 'spoiled' and 'narcissistic' HERE.
Goldust, in this sense, was everything the business could have hoped for and more. He was presented as a homo-erotic, sexually ambivalent individual, obsessed with the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. His persona was so controversial that certain wrestlers actually refused to work with him at first. If you go back and watch his early matches with Razor Ramon, you can actually see the unease playing out on Scott Hall’s face.
Goldust would take his character to even more extreme levels during the Attitude Era, especially when he was teamed up with Luna Vachon. The fact that he was able to thrive in the days of Stone Cold and The Rock is a testament to his abilities to keep his in-ring gimmick fresh and interesting.
Dustin was also able to enjoy huge success in the WWF without ever explicitly making reference to his relationship with his father Dusty. He clearly wanted to make a name for himself away from the Rhodes Dynasty, and it’s safe to say he accomplished just that.
Goldust had a brief spell back at the top of WWE when he teamed up with brother Cody against Triple H and the Authority. But since then, he has been nothing more than a bit-player on Monday Night RAW, and it’s a shame if his long career were to end under such circumstances. He is currently going through a feud with R-Truth, which is giving him much more TV time, but that’s hardly the kind of rivalry which is going to give the legend the send off he deserves.
He would be much more suited to a Wrestlemania retirement match against a top WWE star. There are no obvious choices at this point, considering Goldust has been largely irrelevant for so long, but if WWE were to one day convince Cody to come back, maybe this would be the dream match that could end the career of Goldust in style.
