Dustin Runnels has had himself quite the legendary career, spanning over a quarter of a century, giving him over two dozen title reigns in promotions, big and small. He's a surefire first-ballot Hall Of Famer whenever he decides to retire for good, but not everything he's been involved with has been good. As Black Reign, Dustin looked like a shell of his former self. He was in the worst physical condition that anyone had ever seen him in, and he looked much older than he was (38 at the time of the character's debut). His matches were very bad, and everything was just off. He was trying to be a "darker" version of Goldust, but it just came across as a terribly cheap knockoff, which wasn't helping how many wrestling fans looked at TNA. Years later, we would find out there was a reason why he looked so bad. At the time, he was in the middle of a terrible drug addiction, admitting that he was taking 40 pills a day in his time with TNA, as well as being addicted to alcohol and cocaine. His father, Dusty Rhodes, was next-in-line to Dixie Carter at the time, so that explains how Dustin could have received his job, but you have to question Dusty's parenting skills in allowing his son to keep wrestling when he was in such a rough place in his life. Thankfully, he has turned his life around, kicking his habits and is doing some of the best in-ring work of his entire career now, at the age of 45, but those days in TNA were incredibly rough.
Columnist/Podcaster/Director at LordsOfPain.net for nearly seven years, with nearly 2000 total columns written. Interviewed and/or involved in interviewing the likes of Tyler Black/Seth Rollins (twice), Diamond Dallas Page, Jimmy Jacobs, Christopher Daniels, Uhaa Nation and more.
