Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
‘The American Dream’ Dusty Rhodes had a legendary career as a professional wrestler. Perhaps, even greater than his career as a wrestler, was his innovative contributions to the business as a booker. Whether it was Starrcade, War Games or even The Bunkhouse Stampede, Dusty created many memorable events and attractions. It only made sense that Dusty at some point, would attempt to start his own wrestling promotion. He not only tried once to create his own company, but twice.
His first try happened back in 1989 with the birth of the PWF (The Professional Wrestling Federation) based in Florida. That promotion failed to catch on and eventually folded. Dusty, however, was a very ambitious individual and when another opportunity to kickstart a promotion from the ground up was in front of him…he took his shot. It didn’t initially begin that way though. When Dusty was fired by WCW back in 1999/2000, Rhodes was not ready to just retire and walk away from the only business he knew. It began with Rhodes opening up a wrestling school which he trained just a select few students. Rhodes claimed that he turned away countless applicants to his school and just wanted to focus on a small group that he felt could one day become big stars.
While training his students, it occurred to Rhodes that aside from WWE, WCW and perhaps ECW, there weren’t many places left to apply their craft. So, Dusty started his own promotion called ‘Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling’ (TCW) which he based in Georgia. The tagline to his newly created TCW was “Old school with modern ideas.” Rhodes wanted to create a sort of territorial promotion in the southeast portion of the United States. Rhodes was able to secure local TV deals down in Atlanta and Macon, Georgia.
When World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling folded in 2001, Rhodes opened up his roster to include several former WCW and ECW stars including Daffney, Scotty Riggs, Lodi, Tajiri, Ron Reis, Steve Corino, CW Anderson and Larry Zybzsko. The small promotion proved to be very popular down south and Rhodes began expanding to tour in places like Alabama, Tennessee and Florida. Ray ‘Glacier’ Lloyd was the inaugural TCW heavyweight champion.
Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling was also a family affair for Dusty as his son Dustin played a large role with the company. Dustin was once quoted as saying…“We’re getting back to our roots, the way wrestling used to be.” Dustin also envisioned that TCW would one day grow large enough, to become the #2 wrestling promotion in the country. Not only was Dustin in integral part of TCW’s growth, but Dusty’s other son Cody worked as both a referee and a member of the ring crew as a teenager. His boys saw that television, while important, was not the only means to advertise TCW. The internet was growing more and more meaningful and Dusty embraced the new technology as a means to promote his shows. Dusty said…“You’re gonna see television become not as important for promoting your talent as the Web, and the Web sites and computers and all that knowledge will be in the next five years. You’re gonna see that come into play more than how many syndications or how many syndicated cities your show goes on.”
With TCW growing in popularity, Dusty claimed that Vince McMahon came calling and offered him a try out as a member of WWE’s creative team in 2002. Dusty turned the offer down due to the fact that he wouldn’t have complete creative control and ultimately all of his ideas would need to be filtered through McMahon himself. Dusty still worked various independent shows outside of his own promotion to earn much needed income.
The American Dream’s dream of becoming a strong second option in professional wrestling came to a screeching halt after the birth of TNA Wrestling. The Jarrett family who ran TNA already had secured a much desired pay per view distribution deal and had stronger financial means than Dusty had for TCW. Dusty was getting offers to join TNA and decided to close shop on TCW in 2003 and join TNA wrestling full time…where he was eventually named booker. While Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling never reached the heights that Dusty and his family had envisioned, he no doubt offered some fans another brief alternative to the major monopoly that was WWE.
