How Good Was Dusty Rhodes Actually?

Conviction is vital to everything that makes Dusty Rhodes great, and that was never more apparent than in the ring. His ability to pop a crowd and make an audience feel his emotions is so much more vital to his in-ring work than the moves themselves.

Obviously, Dusty is not in the upper echelons with the likes of Shawn Michaels and Eddie Guerrero when it comes to in-ring ability, and it’s hard to sell his matches to someone whose favourite wrestler is Will Ospreay. Rhodes wasn’t a worker to the standards of Ricky Steamboat or Harley Race in his era, either. He is probably best known for loving to bleed for his art, as he was bleeding from the '70s all the way up to his 2003/4 run in TNA.

What remains timeless about Dusty Rhodes' style is the way his showmanship and shuffles could sell his trademark jab. The pure charisma with which he’d sell his strikes and his Bionic Elbow, with wiggling hips and whizzing his fists in a circle like a cyclone, did and would pop any crowd, anywhere, in any era. Watch Cody Rhodes sell that same signature offense today, and you can see how it transcended Dusty’s years of prominence.

The real downside to this is that Dusty's limitations can make his matches a little generic. His bouts follow a certain formula that could create magic with the right opponent, but feel a little like audiences had seen it all before if his opposition didn’t know how to stretch out Dream’s skillset. WWE Vault recently uploaded a Dusty match against an all-time technician in Mr. Perfect, but the match itself feels like “just another Dusty Rhodes match”.

7/10