Dustin Rhodes On Leaving WWE For AEW, Wednesday Night Wars With NXT
Dustin Rhodes spent had various stints with WWE that dated back to his debut in 1990. He had his most famous stints as Goldust before departing the company earlier this year. He talked about why it was finally the right time to leave when was interviewed by Sportskeeda.
"With the WWE, I'd had enough. It was time for me to go. It had been such a long, storied career with the Goldust character and, you know, I really thought that I was going to retire," Rhodes admitted. "And then I got pulled in and my passion got reignited when I wrestled my brother, and we had the match of the last decade, probably, if not the last two decades.
"It was such a story, a great match. The schedule is a lot different, so it takes some getting used to. We were on the road so much up there that you don't have any time at home with your family and here, with AEW, I love it man! The scheduling is great. I leave Tuesday to go to the production meeting, Wednesday's TV, come home Thursday and whatever else I want to do I'm free to do, which I did not have that freedom to do anything that I wanted to do outside of wrestling up there. They made it very, very difficult and that's one of the reasons why I left."
Rhodes is one of the few active wrestlers who was around during the Monday Night Wars and he even had a short stint in WCW during that time. He was asked how these current "Wednesday Night Wars" compare to the Monday Night Wars.
"You know, I don't look at it as, 'Okay, we need to focus on NXT.' I look at it as we need to put out the best weekly television series that we possibly can every single week and we've been doing that. We have been doing that, our fan base is there and they are growing," stated Rhodes.
"We are an alternative to the WWE programming. We are something very, very special that the fans have commanded and wanted for a long time and we are giving it to them. So me, personally, I'm not looking at NXT saying, 'Oh, my God, they done this this week, we need to do this,' and go back and forth. I don't like that, I'm not focused on that, I'm focused on my kids, our kids here at AEW because they are the future right now to me and our company."