Bruce Prichard argued that it would have made sense for WWE to pull the plug on the Goldust character had it flopped, which was clearly not the case. He reiterated that Dustin’s brief run as a family man “did not work” and took away from the mystique of the Goldust character.

By May 1998, Dustin’s identity crisis reached new levels as he set aflame his Goldust outfit and no longer went by the moniker of The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust — a persona that mimicked celebrities and fellow wrestlers with characters such as “Chynadust,” “Sabledust,” “Dust Lovedust,” “Dustydust,” “Hunterdust,” “Marilyn Mansondust” and “Vaderdust.” The metamorphosis of the character — or regression based on who you ask — did not resonate with Prichard whatsoever.

“Nobody gave a s–t about Dustin Rhodes,” Prichard stressed. “They only gave a s–t about Goldust. We stripped him of that, and everything that the audience had an emotional attachment to. It’s hard to talk about because I f—ing loved Dustin Rhodes, I thought he was one of the most talented talents I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. But when you take a flamboyant character like Goldust and strip it all away, and you make someone a boring husband, I’m not watching TV, and I’m not watching WWE to see a boring husband with a kid who goes on TV and says, ‘My daddy was mean to me. We didn’t get along.'”

In conclusion, Prichard felt that the storyline could have worked if Dusty were still employed by WWE and could have interjected himself in an on-screen program with his son. “There were more people attached to Dusty Rhodes than Dustin Rhodes. That audience, the WWE fans, didn’t watch that other s–t [WCW]. Even if they knew that Dustin was Dusty’s son, they didn’t care. And I just thought that everything interesting, everything emotional, we took away from him.”