Bruce Prichard Discusses How WWE Wanted Hulk Hogan vs. Dustin Rhodes at WrestleMania 9 and Discusses How Vince McMahon Saw Goldust as an Investment

– During his Something to Wrestle With podcast, Bruce Prichard spoke about the Goldust character and gimmick. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com)

Prichard on how WWE was interested in Dustin Rhodes to work against Hulk Hogan for WrestleMania 9: “Let me put it this way; we were interested in Dustin Runnels, not Dustin Rhodes. WrestleMania 9 we were looking for something for Hulk Hogan to do; an opponent for him at WrestleMania 9. Hulk had been away and it was time for him to come back, but he didn’t feel that there was really an opponent for him so Pat [Patterson] and I were looking at different talent outside of the WWF that we can bring in and create an opponent for Hogan and not get someone from the roster but bring someone new in to work with Hogan. We had seen Dustin Rhodes working on the TBS show, WCW Saturday Night. We thought, man, he moves, he is smooth, a good, decent sized worker. Dustin is a big kid, and I remember thinking, oh my God. I then started to do a Dusty [Rhodes] promo because Dusty had always done this promo to me to pitch a match with Dusty Rhodes and Hulk Hogan.”

Prichard on how Hulk Hogan shot down the idea: “I start doing all these Dusty Rhodes promos and asked if you can imagine, not a match between Dusty Rhodes and Hogan, but it would actually be his son that comes in to work with Hulk Hogan? We had Hogan on speaker phone and Vince [McMahon] asked me to pitch the idea to Hulk, and I’m looking at Vince like, he doesn’t want me to pitch it he wants Vince to pitch it. He wants to hear from the boss, he doesn’t care what Bruce and Pat [Patterson] have, what does Vince have? So, I go in there with this big, long elaborate pitch, cutting promos, then suddenly Hogan’s reaction was, ‘you mean that skinny little kid with the buggy-whipped arms I see on TBS this past Saturday?’ Vince checked out at that point. Hogan wasn’t interested and that meant we weren’t getting passed that conversation.”

Prichard on how Rhodes became Goldust for WWE and how Vince McMahon saw him: “When we first came up with Goldust, Vince saw it as a huge idea and a huge investment. He was looking at it at just that—an investment. None of us really knew if this was going to really hit right off the bat, but we had confidence in Dustin and we had confidence in the potential of Dustin. He had it in his genes. He had the talent, but we had to get it out of him, but we knew it was going to be a work in progress.”