10 WWE Ideas EVEN Vince McMahon Thought Were Too Sleazy
5. Goldust's Bizarre Surgery Idea
Goldust was, if nothing else, a testament to the ability of the man behind the paint.
A giant Texan prodigy of a babyface, the WWF's mandatory random repackage generator somehow spewed out Goldust, an androgynous, bizarre psychological sex predator heel. Rhodes stumbled not into the WWF but opposite land in 1995, and he still pulled off the character so well that it became synonymous with him. An intoxicating and important time capsule, his outrageously compelling early run has dated horrendously - the psychology is regressive, the work an afterthought - and it didn't hook audiences after the initial, lurid furore.
The WWF subsequently ballooned in fascination, rendering Goldust normal, somehow, and he struggled to get over as The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust, a character that amounted to a weekly rejected pitch meeting of desperate, controversial new gimmicks that played out onscreen.
What if I'm a gimp?
What if I black up?
What if...
...I get breast implants?!
Yes, Rhodes, desperate to reverse his fading run, offered to surgically alter himself for real, Mechanical Animals-style, to set the conversation ablaze once more. Incredibly, Vince McMahon and Bruce Prichard talked him out of it. Perhaps out of kindness - this was an incredible sacrifice, when they couldn't put the silicone back in the tube - or perhaps because Vince truly felt this was problematic, hollow shock value.
They could have called him 'Goldbust'.
Thank you.