8 WWE Veterans That Turned Back The Clock

Who doesn't love a wrestling legend? The nostalgia pops that some of wrestlings past greats continue to receive should tell you that pretty much everyone does. It was great stuff seeing a Roddy Piper turn up on Raw and insult some young buck or having Dusty Rhodes rock up and throw out a few bionic elbows to the job squad, God rest their souls.

Just like it was great seeing the retired trio of Hall of Famers - Steve Austin, Mick Foley and Shawn Michaels - waltz out onto the big stage of WrestleMania 32 and lay waste to the League of Nations. You may have cried about how it was 'burying' Barrett and co., but I bet you popped when that glass shattered, didn't you?

These brief moments are great and all, but it's a whole other thing for a WWE legend/veteran to go out into that 20x20 squared circle and give a good account of themselves in a match against an active, full-time WWE performer. It's hard, but it's not impossible, as several performers have proven in recent years.

It can be a risk putting a member of the 45-and-onwards brigade in there under the bright lights of TV and PPV, but these eight WWE stars justified WWE's decision to do so and proved they still had some gas left in the tank yet...

The face paint and body suit may fool you, but don't forget that Goldust is 47-years-old and has been wrestling since way back in 1988. By the time he stepped into the ring with WWE World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton on the September 9th 2013 episode of Raw, he had a quarter of a century's worth of bumps on his bump card.

Goldust hadn't been seen in a WWE ring in some time and this was his first match back (he'd made a brief appearance in that years Royal Rumble but that was a one-shot deal). He'd been working as an agent before he was released in May 2012 and then did some independent shows in the meantime.

He was in great shape, having been clean and sober for five years at that point and ditching drinking and drugs for working out and clean living. But still, this was a major, much-hyped match against the champion of the company and one of the best in the business.

Could Goldust hang with him?

Wrestling like his life was on the line, the real-life Dustin Runnels entered a magnificent performance, keeping a great pace and sticking on Orton and making him retreat in the early going. It didn't take long for the crowd to realise how good what they were seeing was, lavishing a 'you still got it!' chant on the bizarre one.

The crowd were so behind Goldust, who teased getting a victory with some magnificent nearfalls, including countering an RKO into the Cross-Rhodes. In the end, he succumbed to an RKO and ate defeat, but he proved that he could still go and hadn't lost a step, setting him up for a wonderful tag team run with brother Cody and some truly fantastic matches challenging The Shield.