10 Wrestlers Punished For Trying To Steal The Limelight
5. Goldust
Dustin Runnels had to consult a dictionary after getting off the phone to Vince McMahon in 1995. He'd just said yes to playing an 'androgynous' character without knowing what the word meant after years of working as the cowboy son of Dusty Rhodes - it was a radical shift.
It was thus pretty unfair when he was roundly mocked (later on camera) for a 1998 suggestion to McMahon that he got breast implants. He'd been saddled with a twisted 'Artist Formerly Known As' variant on his bizarre persona that allowed the company to broadly throw shade at high art, deviance and counter-culture, and reasoned that with every female going under the knife, why shouldn't he?
McMahon turned the request down before scaling the gimmick back just as he had with the original Goldust's strained sexuality in 1996. Runnels ended up far braver with the character than Vince literally could have ever imagined. Ridicule was the only remaining way the Chairman could parse the complexities of a facade he'd crafted.