Before he was wrestling his brother, teaming up with Keith Lee, and training the women's division of AEW, Dustin Rhodes was Goldust, one of the most “Bizarre” characters to ever grace a WWE ring. From the gold and black facepaint – which semi-transitioned over to AEW – to the blonde wig, his valet Marlena, his screwball antics, and his… unusual behavior toward other male members of the roster, it's really hard to envision how the son of Dusty Rhodes fell into such an unusual character.

Fortunately, fans won't have to wonder anymore, as, in a conversation with Lars Frederiksen and Dennis Farrell of The Wrestling Perspective podcast, Rhodes explained the exact moment when he was forced to sink or swim in his new moniker during a show at The Garden in 1996.

“It happened in Madison Square Garden, and it happened in 1996, I think. I was wrestling Savio Vega, and we've been making house show loops for weeks or months,” Rhodes noted via Fightful. “I am getting my bearings trying to figure out the heel work, the character, and stuff like that. Every night he would want me to do certain things, and I would say no, I can't, I can't do that because I was scared to cross the line. This is back when Vince [McMahon] used to go to the house shows and be a fan at the curtains. He watched the shows to see who was getting reactions from the crowd and things like that. I was like, oh God, and we're in the Garden. I mean, this is Puerto Rico; he's Puerto Rican. The Puerto Rican population in New York is very high, and in 1996 it was crazy.”

“It was as simple as, ‘okay, I'm going to do this tonight. I go out there, and I'm scared to death.' We get to the point of the match where I'm going to do this, basically going behind him and rubbing up and down his chest. He turns around, he charges me, and I bail out of the ring, that simple. The rubbing up of the chest part is what really pissed off the fans.”

So how did Rhodes make it work? By really leaning into the absurdity of his character and feeding off of the crowd's reaction.

Dustin Rhodes found Goldust by playing into the character, not fighting against it.

So how did Dustin Rhodes come to accept playing an androgynous character with very little resemblance to his real-life self? Well, in the opinion of “The Natual,” it was by playing into the reaction from the gimmick and being a heel in the weirdest way possible.

“I was scared to death because I didn't want to portray something I am not, but that's show business. That's what brings out characters. It makes them really good or really, really sh**ty. Then as soon as I heard that response from the New York crowd, they're ruthless, it was like, holy s**t. I just tapped into something. I thought I couldn't do it, and I stepped over the line, and it worked. I'm just looking, and they're yelling every kind of obscene thing to me that’s possible. They’re throwing stuff, they had to make an announcement to stop, or you'll be ejected. They're still throwing s**t, and I'm dodging [things]; I roll back in the ring, and Savio was in the corner, just laughing, and I'm like, what the f**k are you laughing at? We locked back up, and I said, what are you laughing at? He said, see how easy that was. Now, watch. I'm going to make you do one more thing. I pushed him back to the corner, and he said, turn around and rub your a** in my crotch area. So, I did it right. I turned around and made these facial expressions. These weird-ass facial expressions, and he charged at me again, and I rode out again,”

“The rest was history from that point on in. Goldust became Goldust, and I found the character that night, and it was freaking cool. I had a nice run for a while.”

In 2023, it's hard to look at the character Rhodes portrayed and be too offended by it, save maybe his decision to wear blackface a time or two during his “The Artest Formerly Known as Goldust” era; performers like Effy take a similar schtick to far greater lengths and are actually open about their sexuality, instead of portraying a character that is very different from their own real beliefs. Still, with the value of hindsight, it's hard not to appreciate what Rhodes did, as he helped to push the wrestling industry forward in tangible ways, even if that wasn't Mr. McMahon's intention at the time.