4. Old School Wrestling Legend Remembers Dusty Rhodes

NWA Legend & WWE Hall of Famer Tully Blanchard, whom most Old School fans remember as being a member of the 4 Horsemen from 1985 till 1988, was recently interviewed by the ‘Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling’ about his memories of the late great “American Dream” Dusty Rhodes.

Here’s what Tully had to say about missing Dusty:

“I had seen Dusty at a number of legends shows and we talked in passing and didn’t really have an opportunity to have long conversations. I was flying to Charlotte to be apart of the fan-fest and when I landed and turned my phone on it just exploded of news of Dusty’s passing. When I saw Arn, I didn’t really know that Dusty was sick because the last time we spent anytime together was in 2012 at the Hall of Fame induction when he did such a great job of inducting the Four Horseman and it really just went kind of surreal. My Dad had passed in 2012 and there are so many ties between my Dad and Dusty that people may not know but I was still processing that and still am today and that has been five years and now with Dusty at two years, when you said that I just kind of had to take an extra breath and think, it has been two years already. Truly time keeps on going and it is just amazing how quickly time goes.”

He said the following about their legendary 80s NWA feud:

“At the start of 1985 we got Baby Doll and went forward with it and that was all Dusty. He wanted me to have a female manager and they were looking for Sunshine (who worked for Dallas) for quite awhile and they actually couldn’t find her. We were working during Christmas week for Eddie Graham and did some shots to help the territory down there and Nickla Roberts was wrestling on one of the cards and I told Dusty that she has got to be Baby Doll. In fact, he and I saw her and we went and had a meeting and nearly said it simultaneously. It was a huge boost to the territory, a huge boost to Nickla and certainly a huge boost to the Dusty Rhodes/ Tully Blanchard feud that was just getting started. Some of the great moments like when Dusty got Baby Doll for thirty days and putting her up in cage and all of the stadium matches where the money was hanging above the ring and there are so many of them I can barely remember all the different matches that we had during that time. When we switched Baby Doll baby face and I slapped her, Dusty came out and defended her honor. I just watched that recently on YouTube and one of my daughters asked if I really hit her and I did, I smacked her pretty hard.

But that was the thing that was so big about what we did because what we did was believable and that is why people still remember it today. We had a first blood match and that was at Starrcade 86. Then we had the phase of barbed-wire matches, which were friggin’ nuts. I don’t think we had a Starrcade match that was a barbed-wire match but I know we had a ladder match. We may have done a barbed-wire match in the summer time at the stadium in Charlotte.” “Everyone of those was great to be a part of and great to be part of wrestling history and I was a very fortunate man that Dusty had the confidence in me to be able to sell tickets working with him. That is when you know you’ve got to go and I ran with it.”