The Many Faces Of Goldust Ranked From Worst To Best

9. The Lonestar

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Arguably the best example of Runnels' reliance on gimmicks to get over was his initial run in TNA. Two months after his WWE contract expired, Runnels turned up in the (fairly) new promotion as 'The Lonestar' Dustin Rhodes and immediately challenged Jeff Jarrett for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship on the 83rd episode of NWA Total Non Stop Action.

Rhodes was one of many 'legends' to challenge Jarrett for that title in the early years of TNA whilst AJ Styles and company were stealing shows on the undercard, and it could be argued that Rhodes was the least popular of these. If he had arrived as Goldust the story would have been different, but Dustin's non-WWE career may always be tainted by WWE's ownership of his most popular gimmick.

The Lonestar made a handful of appearances in TNA before disappearing in late 2005. His matches were fine but nothing more and the gimmick was merely there.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.