{"id":12859,"date":"2015-06-11T18:08:13","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T22:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=12859"},"modified":"2021-05-22T09:48:59","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T13:48:59","slug":"r-i-p-virgil-riley-runnels-jr-aka-dusty-rhodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=12859","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P.  Virgil Riley Runnels Jr. aka Dusty Rhodes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2015\/z061115rip_dustyrhodes.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"537\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Virgil Riley Runnels Jr.<\/strong> passed away today.\u00a0 Perhaps you knew him better as <strong>Dusty Rhodes<\/strong> aka\u00a0 <em><strong>The American Dream<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Pro Wrestling fan or not, I&#8217;ll bet you knew of him.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Dusty<\/strong> began his career in 1968 in the <strong>AWA<\/strong> as a bad guy.\u00a0 That&#8217;s when I first saw him wrestle on late night tv.\u00a0 <strong>Dusty<\/strong> was a bad guy and partnered with <strong><em>Dirty<\/em> Dick Murdock.\u00a0 <\/strong>They were a couple of cowboys chasing the tag team title.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I was a kid living deep in <strong>WWA<\/strong> territory that was run by <strong>Dick the Bruiser<\/strong> and we considered the <strong>AWA<\/strong> a lesser organization.\u00a0 I knew who <strong>Dusty<\/strong> was but since I never saw him in &#8220;my&#8221; territory, going against my champs, I didn&#8217;t give him much thought.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In 1973, I moved to Florida and into <strong>NWA<\/strong> territory.\u00a0 Remember this was when pro wrestling wasn run by several smaller organizations with no national company like the <strong>WWE<\/strong>.\u00a0<strong> Dusty<\/strong> showed up as a singles wrestler.\u00a0 He was still a cowboy but definitely a more modern man of the people.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Given the mic, <strong>Dusty<\/strong> shined.\u00a0 He didn&#8217;t look like the typical champion, but once he dropped his atomic elbow and did a little victory dance, he became the people&#8217;s champ.\u00a0 <strong>Dusty&#8217;s<\/strong> career flourished and he went on to great success not only in the <strong>NWA<\/strong>, but also <strong>Vince McMahon&#8217;s WWF<\/strong> (later the <strong>WWE<\/strong>), the <strong>WCW<\/strong> and <strong>ECW<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Dusty Rhodes<\/strong> was inducted into the <strong>WWE Hall of Fame<\/strong> on March 31, 2007 and continued to be a force behind the scenes as a writer and creative director.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Our thoughts and prayers go out to<strong> Dusty Rhodes&#8217;<\/strong> family, friends and fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virgil Riley Runnels Jr. passed away today.\u00a0 Perhaps you knew him better as Dusty Rhodes aka\u00a0 The American Dream. Pro<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-rip"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12860,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12859\/revisions\/12860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}