Brian Damage
A gimmick is something that is intended to hook the attention of fans to a wrestler. They may be outrageous or steeped more in reality. Whatever the case may be, some have succeeded and many others have failed. The Gimmick Table takes a look at the origins of some of your favorite and not-so-favorite gimmicks of professional wrestlers.
Today we browse the gimmick of Goldust
When Dustin Runnels joined the WWF in 1995, the original idea was to make him a modern-day cowboy. Other ideas were tossed around, but according to Vince McMahon in an online interview, the idea of Goldust came to him after 48 hours of no sleep. Vince supposedly thought of the idea of a very flamboyant, androgynous character after hours of trying to come up with something new and different. When asked how he came up with the name of Goldust, McMahon said it was his favorite color and wanted to somehow incorporate Gold with Dustin’s name.
Whether Vince was completely honest about the name, from early sketches of the Goldust gimmick, the character wore suits and did not have face paint. The character had some eye makeup, but that was all. When Vince McMahon and Bruce Prichard pitched the idea to Dustin, he said that Vince repeatedly called the character androgynous. Runnels agreed to do the gimmick but had no clue what the word androgynous meant. He said he had to look up the word after getting off the phone with them. When Dustin saw the definition, he immediately started to regret agreeing to do such a gimmick. His then wife Terri convinced him to give it a try.
Dustin was not on speaking terms with his father Dusty and wanted to stop trying to fill the shoes of his famous father and carve his own path in professional wrestling. Terri helped him get to that realization that this Goldust character could be a good thing for his career. When Dustin went to Titan Tower for a dress rehearsal, he convinced Vince to allow the character to have face paint. Dustin always marveled at wrestlers like the Great Muta who wore full face paint and wanted this gimmick to have that. Vince agreed to give it a shot and once Dustin walked into the boardroom full of WWF executives in his Goldust outfit and face paint….Vince loved the look.
Dustin recalled Pat Patterson sitting in the corner amazed at Dustin’s transformation and mentioned that he looked like an Oscar statuette. That apparently gave Vince the idea to incorporate a Hollywood aspect to the character. Dustin said it took him about 6 months to be completely comfortable with the Goldust gimmick. Not only was he trying to be the androgynous character McMahon wanted but also learn to act like a heel for the first time in his career. Runnels credited his match against Savio Vega in Madison Square Garden as to when the light bulb finally went on in his head of how Goldust should act. Savio and Dustin were going over their match before the show, and Savio suggested that Goldust should rub his hands up and down Savio’s body and then when Savio went to punch him…Goldust would jump out of the ring and run away.
The New York City crowd gave him such heat for doing that spot and a thunderous reaction to when Savio got offense on Goldust that everything clicked with how the character should be moving forward. Dustin Runnels made the Goldust character come alive and portrayed it for several years off and on during a number of stints with the WWF/WWE until 2012.
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