10 Wrestlers Who Became Amazing After Heavy Criticism
2. Dustin Rhodes
This is essentially Dustin's defining character trait in 2020: he is the old horse that everybody, at one point or another - fans, critics, even his own flesh and blood - tried to melt down into glue. But he has used critical savagery - and the apathy of his former employer - as fuel to stick around and star in an industry that only now is giving him his proper due.
Even the electric, slimmed-down "Goldust has never looked better!" phase wasn't quite enough to establish his legacy as a great. The memories of those dynamic, highly emotive performances in 2013 didn't much help the complete disinterest that marred his 2017 programme with R-Truth, nor his mini-feud with Bray Wyatt that same year. When Wyatt removed Goldust's paint, it was meant to stir a certain pathos; in reality, Rhodes' age was used by some as evidence that he could no longer go, or at least shouldn't.
He weaponised this criticism to incredible effect at AEW's first-ever show, at which he engineered a level of drama the entire industry had lacked for decades by selling a ghastly blade-job so profoundly well that several teary fans in the arena were concerned for his wellbeing. He snapped them into a state of euphoria when executing a perfect Code Red, and the PG continuation of this performance has strongly enhanced Dynamite.
When he kicks the mat and stretches his hand to his tag partner, wearing an expression of wincing pain, he commands a detached, modern audience to fall into the spell only the proper workers can cast.